An old digital photo - Ghost?

This shot was taken by a women who had just gotten a digital camera. It was probably around 1998 or so. She was upstate in NY and took a photo of the deer. When she looked at the photo later, she was shocked, and sent it to my friend, who was an avid photographer. He forwarded it to me. I have had in in my archives ever since. Digital photo processing was almost non-existent back then, and I have no reason to doubt this is right out of her camera. She was walking on a trail when she took this photo. I asked if it could have been a reflection from a window. I don't see any exif data for it but I was probably a Sony Mavica floppy disc camera, or similar vintage. Since I recently jointed ATS, I thought I would share this item.

Nice pic. once your eyes adjust to what you're looking at. of course the people here will should, fake, photo-shop etc. even those that say pics or it didn't happen will say there's a pic and it still didn't happen.

As for me, well I will just say cool photo, and take the story for what it is. But that's just because I like a mystery

Cool photo... looks like a ghost for sure.. but I am skeptical.

Will await the photo~shop guys/gals to see what they have to say as far as the imaging goes.

I have a love for apparitions so thanks for bringing this picture into question.

Jenn

reply to post by zayonara


FAKE!



You can see where the blur or smoothing tool was used around the implanted ghost

IDK... that "ghostly" woman looks a bit too happy and like she's on Spring Break or something

New member comes on ATS, posts fake photo.

Nothing shocks me anymore.

Cool pic...she looks like a forest fairy....fake or not I have no clue....

reply to post by PageAlaCearl


In addition to that, the shopped-in picture seems to have started out as a higher dpi image than the forest scene. Gradients are too smooth on the chest/bosom area.

I shall name her "the Photoshop Fairy".

reply to post by amongus


I agree. It's so clearly fake. lol

SPAM removed by Admin

Thanks for the analysis. Like I said, this is how I got the photo and it was froma woman who just got a digital camera and didn't even know how to email it, my friend talked her through emailing it, and forwarded it to me. This took place at work around 1989 in our adjacent cubicles. So while anything is possible, the "work flow" in this photo was very limited. Yes it's possible it was faked, anything is possible, but knowing what I know, it's real. A real ghost? dunno. It was in the Catskills, NY. If you knew me, you would know that I don't BS. I am an engineer and maintain a factual attitude as much as possible.

I agree, the pixels seem smoothed around the apparition. I honestly don't think it was photoshopped because nobody had photoshop when this was taken. Maybe it was a smudge or strange sensor anomaly. This was at the very beginning of the digital age. Maybe apparitions look smoothed naturally?

I guess the photo shop guys have ruled it's fake.

I don't even know what they used to analyze the smooth lines.

To me my first impression was someone moving out of frame mid shot.
Those old digital cameras had a horrible shutter speed and often produced artifacts.

I'm just not seeing a bottom to the spirit either.
The convincing photos I've seen at least show an outline where the whole body is, or have a reason not to show it IE bottom is in the middle of a desk or in the floor.

It's a cool pic I just think it was someone moving out of the frame mid picture take.

We had Photoshop 5 in 1998,I reckon a whole 10 years after it's release quite a few people had learned how to use it.In fact in those days it was something of a novelty to be able to manipulate those new fangled digital images and "ghost" photos were the most favourite ones to do.

Originally posted by Imagewerx
We had Photoshop 5 in 1998,I reckon a whole 10 years after it's release quite a few people had learned how to use it.In fact in those days it was something of a novelty to be able to manipulate those new fangled digital images and "ghost" photos were the most favourite ones to do.

Star for you.

I was just about to reply to :

...Digital photo processing was almost non-existent back then,...

not as popular as today, but it sure existed back then.
It was 1998, not 1983 !

It's not like it was common as it is today. I can tell you that in our multi-million dollar engineering workplace, we did not have it on our computers 1998, and the woman certainly did not have the knowledge or reason, to manipulate it. Anyhow, as far as I know, and I have had it since the day it was emailed to me, pretty much directly from the woman, it's not 'shopped. So what else could it be?

I studied it a ton, and my best guess was that there could have been a swinging bird feeder hanging from a branch there and it flared. Also, dirt on the lens was a thought, of course. Possibly something flew by and happened to motion blur, into that shape. I don't know. If I knew it was 'shopped, I would stop guessing and would not have posted it... but that's just hearsay to you guys. Any other ideas?

While two of my image Identifier programs say it is photoshoped/edited, I will go with you on not being done intentionally do to the time frame and your word that your company didn't have photoshop. My guess is a photo program was used by the woman to download it from the camera to the computer then saved from the program without manipulation. Most cameras come with a photo altering capable program and when installed will take the picture from the camera instead of a direct download to the computer.

As for the image I'm leaning towards bird-feeder or something similar reflecting the flash. The program that got the image from the camera could have induced some artifacts to the flash flare resulting in the manipulation looking aspects mentioned above.

Added: I am familiar with this camera and the software that came with it, when the camera was plugged in rather than the cd being put in the cd drive, the software would open and load the pictures, which is why I think the edited reading is un-intentional. she just followed the program steps to save it which meant it was processed by the software even though no real changes where made. At least that's my thoughts when taking into account the story behind the photo.

Originally posted by amongus
New member comes on ATS, posts fake photo.

Nothing shocks me anymore.

I honestly hope that never shocked you.

Anyway, as should be obvious the picture is beyond fake. Doesn't take any real expertise to tell that just by looking.

I've seen much better fakes. This looks like some laid the image of some woman on top of the other picture using MS paint

Originally posted by gimme_some_truth

Originally posted by amongus
New member comes on ATS, posts fake photo.

Nothing shocks me anymore.

I honestly hope that never shocked you.

Anyway, as should be obvious the picture is beyond fake. Doesn't take any real expertise to tell that just by looking.

I've seen much better fakes. This looks like some laid the image of some woman on top of the other picture using MS paint

It sure does look like that doesn't it? But it isn't. Thanks for the warm welcomes to ATS.

It doesn't matter how old the photo is. It can always be scanned into a computer and manipulated long after the fact. Which is definitely what has happened here.
A partial picture of a happy smiling "ghost?" Sorry. Not buying it.

And it's even more suspicious that this image has NO EXIF data in it. NONE at all. It takes a little work to take the data out of an image. Although it isn't all that hard to do. But...someone who can remove the EXIF can manipulate the photo too.