15 year old ghost mystery possibly solved

[mercian]

This is defo the same image, the chances of the features that match doing so as perfectly as they do is so negligable that I think there's no question.
The few areas that don't match can be discounted; as we've concluded the image has been photoshopped, so there's no end of tiny alterations and tweaks the artist could have made.

I use photoshop all the time, and as others have said already, just by adjusting the brighness/contrast and exposure levels would account for the loss of the hat and bleaching effect. Some liberal erasing and a few tweaks with 'distort' would account for anything else.

I think the (vertical) line Stray Cat is querying may even be part of the original fire image, as the pleat of her dress would prob be behind the railing anyway.

This hoax would not be difficult to do, at all. Doctoratlantis, great animation!

 

[sophia8]

I use photoshop all the time, and as others have said already, just by adjusting the brighness/contrast and exposure levels would account for the loss of the hat and bleaching effect. Some liberal erasing and a few tweaks with 'distort' would account for anything else.

I think the (vertical) line Stray Cat is querying may even be part of the original fire image, as the pleat of her dress would prob be behind the railing anyway.

This hoax would not be difficult to do, at all. Doctoratlantis, great animation!

I agree that it's a clear hoax, but remember, this was done 15 years ago - would it have been so simple then?

 

[Susheel]

I agree that it's a clear hoax, but remember, this was done 15 years ago - would it have been so simple then?

As simple as using Photoshop. Wait a minute...digital photo editing software was available then.
However, even if it wasn't, a certain amount of patience and a little basic dark room skills used to result in some very neat photographs. In fact one has only to go back to a lot of the propaganda pictures from as early as the 30s from the USSR and later China where people in group photos were removed or added as political winds turned. Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin together and then suddenly some years later only Lenin and Stalin in the same photo.
A photo of this type could have been, with some effort, reproduced by an amateur with basic darkroom skills.

 

[Apology]

As simple as using Photoshop. Wait a minute...digital photo editing software was available then.
However, even if it wasn't, a certain amount of patience and a little basic dark room skills used to result in some very neat photographs. In fact one has only to go back to a lot of the propaganda pictures from as early as the 30s from the USSR and later China where people in group photos were removed or added as political winds turned. Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin together and then suddenly some years later only Lenin and Stalin in the same photo.
A photo of this type could have been, with some effort, reproduced by an amateur with basic darkroom skills.

I agree. Let's not forget that photo manipulation techniques were available long before the existence of Photoshop. The Weekly World News based an entire journalism empire upon it. The spread of Photoshop is what really killed the WWN and turned it into the parody that it is today. Originally all of their stories were written in a completely authoritative fashion and people really did believe what they printed.

 

[EdipisReks]

What the hell is wrong with people??

as with any other philosophical system, for some people skepticism attains religious status. a tenant of skepticism is that one should keep an open mind. a religious version of skepticism would hold that one must keep an open mind no matter what. the tenants of skepticism can go from being tools for critical understanding of the world to merely being rules written on a stone tablet, repeated but not understood. ironic, sure, but this thread is nothing new, in that regard.