Photoshop fail at The Daily Mail

Daily Mail via Tabloid Watch

There's something fascinating about the daily fail at the Daily Mail, where a nightmarish alternative reality—cloned flora, ghostly spaces, grinning dismemberment—is an emergent property of ineptitude. The real magic, though, is the newspaper's complete indifference to how obvious it is: an admirably postmodern confidence in the relativity of truth.

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

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margaretpoa

Maybe they were too preoccupied with how the baby looks dead to worry too much about the wall….
- http://www.facebook.com/matthew.urso Matthew Urso
  
  dead baby don’t care
  - Wreckrob8
    
    A handy alternative for Christmas dinner if you want something fresh and have forgotten to pre-order your turkey.
    - knoxblox
      
      Alternative Use: Stick a Transilluminator up its nostrils to make his cranium glow, and ta-da! — A nifty light-up Baby Jesus Tree Topper, just in time for Christmas!
      - Wreckrob8
        
        Baby Jesus sandwiches after Christmas, too.
      - welcomeabored
        
        Or perhaps with a little taxidermy…
        
        http://www.neatorama.com/2012/12/19/Terrifying-Vampire-Rat-Taxidermy/
        
        What? Too far?
    - Felton / Moderator
      
      Oh, Daily Mail, Swift was being ironic!
    - brandonmwest
      
      Mmmm, tender AND mild!
- bcsizemo
  
  I think someone spiked the baby bottle.
- knoxblox
  
  ”I bought 200 pounds worth of groceries, and got this dead baby…for free!”
CaptainPedge

The only evidence I see of blatant photoshoppery is the wall on the left hand side of the picture, which was most probably done to cover over identifiable images of people who weren’t anything to do with the article. Where is the “cloned flora” and the “grinning dismemberment”

Edit – Don’t get me wrong, I think the Mail is an awful, awful rag, but criticise them for their homophobic, anti-Islam, little England asshatterry where it’s truly deserved, not for what is nothing more than a clumsy photoshop effort.
- nixiebunny
  
  If you look at the left side of the food pile, halfway up there’s a red bag labeled Walker. Try to figure out how it’s suspended in that position.
  - James Churchill
    
    Actually, I think that’s legit – the shadow behind it is correct. It’s probably just impaled on a giant metal stake or something (maybe the one the baby was originally on?)
    - nixiebunny
      
      I don’t think so. All that stuff has nothing to hold it up, as it floats over the seating area of the couch. If you tried to recreate that pile of stuff above a couch, your result is guaranteed to be a lot lower and wider.
      
      The food tower had to have been built against a wall, then shooped in front of a couch, to achieve the effect we see here.
      - Glippiglop
        
        Professional photographers know plenty of tricks for achieving whatever effect that they’re going for at the time.
        
        The tower is in two parts. The stuff at the back is perched on the top of one or two boxes that have been covered by a white sheet. The front tower also appears to be resting against the box(es) for extra support.You can tell that the boxes are there if you look at the milk containers on the right.
        
        The wall error is pretty funny though.
      - vonbobo
        
        perhaps it is actually the photographer’s tricksie food stacking that gives that bad first impression? The photo also has blown out whites, but maybe that could have been bad shopping too.
        
        Instead, maybe they could have stacked all of the food across the kitchen counters, or on the dining room table, and then put the drunk baby on top of that?
    - billstreeter
      
      The shadow is fake too. You can see white pixels on the edge of the bag which are remnants of a bad crop job. I can see similar anomalies through out the pile of food. I’m pretty sure none of the groceries are actually there.
  - CaptainPedge
    
    Sitting on the sofa. It’s an incredibly light bag of potato chips (Walker’s = Lay’s)
  - Wreckrob8
    
    It is difficult to be absolutely sure. Walkers make crisps. That is a multi-pack. There is not a lot of weight to suspend and the bag could easily assume an upright position without much support.
  - http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot
    
    I think that’s an actual pile of food — you can even see the boxes it’s stacked on.
  - http://www.facebook.com/bob.harvey.92 Bob Harvey
    
    Where’s the lady’s other arm?
    - Wreckrob8
      
      Maybe she is a disabled benefit cheat.
    - invictus
      
      What are you talking about? You can see the fingers of her other hand, holding up the baby’s head.
      - Jake0748
        
        Um… no, I can’t.
      - invictus
        
        Well… Umm… Zoom in? Or pick up a baby; there’s a near-universal way of holding them when they’re too young to support their own head.
  - The Rizz
    
    The bag of chips, and the items around it, have a sort of bright-white outline around them – I’d say they’re definitely either photoshopped into the position or, possibly, actually cardboard cut-outs stuck there. Considering how flat some of the packages look, I’d actually go with the latter.
- Mutation_Engine
  
  i think it’s more of a reference to the Daily Mail’s ongoing daily photoshop fails, and not just this image. Still, it’s amazingly lazy and inept to just remove part of the curtains and pictures. The bag of crisps is probably just taped or wedged into the rest of the pile, but overall it’s a disturbing and poorly executed image.
  Except for the baby, the baby looks well and thoroughly executed.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  There seem to be photos like this at the DM every other day. Crudely clone-stamped backgrounds are the most common photoshop fail, but they’ve had plenty of ghostly or missing limbs over the years, too.
  - CaptainPedge
    
    But couldn’t the same be said for most tabloids?
    - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
      
      The Daily Mail is the exemplar.
- margaretpoa
  
  Clearly that pile isn’t in an angle of repose, unless they are on Phobos perhaps or maybe Deimos. Of course all of that stuff could be piled up on some kind of rack or shelving that’s been artfully kept out of sight but that doesn’t explain how the loaf of bread on the left side, (next to the sofa cushion), is apparently managing to hold up the upper 2/3 of the pile without being crushed.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The only evidence I see of blatant photoshoppery is the wall on the left hand side of the picture
  
  And….? Photoshopping photos in a news article is prima facie unethical.
  - axlrosen
    
    The problem is that this post is confusing. It shows us a single image, and then talks about “cloned flora, ghostly spaces, grinning dismemberment”. I was expecting either a link to a Daily Fail site (like Photoshop Disasters), or seeing lots of fails in this image. I guess Rob was complaining about the DM in general, but just showing us one example. But he wasn’t clear, as can be seen by all the confusion here.
  - Guest
    
    But how is that “news” anyway? Photoshopping mindless garbage is not prima facie unethical.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      But how is that “news” anyway?
      
      The article is a typical Mail propaganda piece about how good, working white people (who aren’t Polish!!!) should have lots of children because that makes Jesus and the Queen happy. Do you really think that society benefits from not criticizing deceptive propaganda outlets?
      - http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore
        
        Check your pillbox, Ant, you caught up on lithium?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        I guess that you don’t read the Mail.
      - echolocate chocolate
        
        If anything, Antinous is understating the awfulness of the Daily Heil.
      - Guest
        
        That’s not what I said. This paper is so full of shit, you can’t attack it with a bb gun, so to speak, criticising a photoshopped petty-burgeois living room, a single stupid choice of words, or the kerning of their fonts. I loved the “Daily Mail Song” by Dan & Dan. That’s how to deal with papers like that: with a metaphorical shotgun.
      - Wreckrob8
        
        Bit of an uphill struggle that one. Poles love making babies for the Baby Jesus, the white English working class, not so much. (We mustn’t drag the Welsh and Scots down with us like we have with the Irish.)
        Still the white lower middle class can fantasize, can’t they?
      - euansmith
        
        Be proud, England leads Europe in Teenage Pregnancies and the ethnic group producing the most off spring are the White British. I work in a job where be see the unmassaged stats.
      - Wreckrob8
        
        @euansmith The stats are what they are. Mostly they don’t need massaging. Much mischief can be created simply by confusing and conflating relative with absolute figures. The immigrant population would have to be breaking all time global fertility records to outproduce the naturalised, mostly white, population. But the one place you will not find much evidence of the existence of a white working class these days is in Church. Immigrants can bring their culture with them and the working class will happily reappropriate their food and music but no longer their gods. Thank God!
http://twitter.com/bayek bayek

I think the woman is missing her foot…
- CaptainPedge
  
  She’s sitting on it
Megan Squire

They should have photoshopped out the dirt on that poor woman’s carpet. :(
- invictus
  
  Actually, you should just wipe down your monitor.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That’s their twelfth child under the age of 18.
Stephen M

lol @ goatse image on the wall plate.
chgoliz

Me, I’m just laughing at the next few years for this family. New baby…. white sofa, white carpet…. oh, yeah, that holiday photo is going to be quite different in a year or two.
- welcomeabored
  
  White envy?
  - chgoliz
    
    I have a lot of white and light colors now. Kids grow up!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That’s number 12, all still at home.
  - chgoliz
    
    Seriously?
    
    I have no words.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      The article disappeared quite rapidly (possibly because of the photoshop flap), but that was their deal.
      
      I grew up in a town where Catholic families had at least five and often more. There was a girl in my Latin class who was the eldest of 13 and she was only 15 herself.
      - chgoliz
        
        It’s not the number of kids, it’s the totally white living/sitting room. That’s crazy. It’s like deciding all your dishware is going to be fine china and crystal while the kids are little. Either there is an inordinate amount of extra cleaning going on, which is a waste of time when you’re raising kids, or they’re not allowed in the room except for photos.
        
        And for the doubters out there….no, “good parenting” doesn’t mean you will never have a spill or a tear or some other oopsie. Kids are hard on parents and homes, no matter how well behaved they are. Especially in the early years.
Senor Schaffer

This shit’s not easy when you’re using MS Paint.
annoyingmouse

“Family: Today’s little moments become tomorrow’s precious memories”

… and something to put Sunday lunch on.

Seriously, screw the photoshop fail, I think I threw up a little whilst cringing at that. I dread to think what tackiness could be hiding behind the edit.
vonbobo

I should duplicate the photo with my holiday stack of empty bottles and cans.
Brainspore

That’s quite a fog rolling in.
Wingnut

Shoulda blanked the whole thing.
http://twitter.com/Lexorin Lexorin

I think she’s trying to bring her Grocery Golem to life and the baby’s soul is in transit to it’s new corporeal form. Soon the Grocery Golem will rise from it’s resting place on the couch and get revenge on everyone who pushed it’s master around while shopping on black friday.
- euansmith
  
  We have no Black Friday in the UK… here it is grim all the year long… hark, I hear the crows…
IronyElemental

Lady: “I will poop all this later.”
Wingnut

Found the before-retouch photo.
Nathan G

Take the pictures off the wall before taking the picture? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
oldtaku

If you follow Photoshop Disasters you will soon come to the sad realization that they Just Don’t Care.

I’m sure at some point they were very careful with Photoshop, trying to make the pixels just so… but then they realized their target audience just doesn’t notice and started giving it to the interns. And Photoshop costs money, might as well give them MSPaint or Gimp.
http://profiles.google.com/spacewatcer Marios P.

this baby looks knackered from carring all this stuff!
I know I would be
Meiles02

In the ellipse of plates on the wall, can anyone tell me what the picture is on the 12 o’clock plate? Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but to me that looks decidedly genital.

Oh maybe that’s the point? With the surrounding plates representing the products of such fecundity…? God bless one and all.
Meiles02

Just looking again at the tower of festive fayre. Aside from the crisps, not one but two (possibly four?) bags of frozen hash browns, own-label scotch eggs. And the seasonal cornucopia further supported with cartons of milk, a loaf of bread and onion rings. What bountiful Christmas hamper is this? Farmfoods?
DewiMorgan

Speaking of crap journalism…
http://www.itslikereally.com/ does this site’s content seem familiar to anyone else?
- http://profiles.google.com/spacewatcer Marios P.
  
  Nah, the comments are not the same
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  There are many sites like that.
margaretpoa

How to make a Christmas tree out of groceries: First, take a lot of groceries and pile them into an improbably steep structure, using tape, staples, twine, superglue and photoshop. Next, place dead baby on top. Then pretend that the owner of a pristine sectional sofa and collectable plates emblazoned with the portraits of family members is too destitute to buy oranges and bread. Viola! You now have a photo worthy of any absurd tabloid which also includes stories about UFOs kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, accusations that Obama is a secret homosexual and Elvis Presley is alive and doing concerts in Papua, New Guinea.
euansmith

“Sacrifice your baby to Satan, and all these worldly treasuries could be YOURS!”