Ghost Photo

Ivan Seeking

I was also able to confirm that it is possible to upload to and receive images on the phone [I hadn't thought about receiving a photo on the phone, only uploading. Obviously it could have been sent from another source].

I guess the most specific piece of information needed is if it can be determined whether a photo is an original, or if it has been stored in memory from another source.

I'll have him send me several pictures when we talk - while I'm sitting there - including one that I see taken. That might be enough to show there has been foul play.

Ivan Seeking

In the mean time, if we have anyone so inclined, it would be interesting to see if the software mentioned by Math is Hard can produce a photo like the one we see here.

dlgoff

Just for the fun of it, I brought the picture into Paint and zoomed in on the "ghosts sleeve". I attached what looks like some sort of "writing"?

Edit: Probably just individual pixels though.

Attached Images

sleeve.bmp (97.1 KB, 61 views)

Evo

Ivan, it looks like a superimposed photo. Notice the darker gray outline around the girl's upper body? It appears to be a photo, I don't know of ghosts that would include a cropped background surrounding their picture.

The question is who did it, since we're going on the assumption the camera owner did not do it.

Ivan Seeking

Well, mixed results. I sat there and had him email a photo of essentially the same shot [taken and emailed while I was sitting there]. The jpg header did not come through.

However, the photo is different than the other one sent. Today's photo has a far lower resolution, but I guess that could just be a camera setting? It is sold as a 8MP camera.

Still, I watched him send it and can tell by the time that I received it that no funny business was possible. So it seems the header check is not definitive for this phone.

Note that his clock is not accurate. The photo shows a time of 8:17 PM, but I received it by email at 7:13 PM, which is just moments after the shot was taken.

Attached Thumbnails

 

alt

IMO, the beginnings of a rectangle above her head, is very suspect, although I don't know if it's a doorway - looks too narrow for a doorway.

But it's there, and as has been asked before, (paraphrased) 'what respectable ghost brings along her own doorway / background' ?

Ivan Seeking

Are you sure that you aren't just seeing the frame of the art work [whatever you call it!]. I do see the line from the frame.

Ivan Seeking

We don't know that for a fact. And I'm not about to make any assumptions. I just don't think he's up to a sophisticated hoax.

But in either case, it has been said here [in S&D] more than once that ~ "if we only had the camera, we could tell if a photo has been faked". Well, we have it, so can this be definitively debunked or not? There is no mystery about the source and we can get all of the details we want. As I said, he is willing to hand the camera over for analysis.

Note also that the art work does not have a chrome background. The faces are chrome with a white background.

alt

Just above the girls head, and not wider than her head, there is a dark area that seems to be the beginnings of a vertically running rectangle, that others here, I think, have referred to as a doorway.

It does not seem to have anything to do with the weird art work thing, and it's lines are not in line with it.

alt

As I said, he is willing to hand the camera over for analysis

That WILL be interesting !

Ivan Seeking

The only problem: Who pays for this?

Regarding the alleged frame: If anyone can clearly show this image has been manipulated, that would be one thing, but allusions to a possible crop line is pretty weak. I don't really see it. I do see shading, but nothing definitive. I don't think one can debunk a photo based on subjective observations.

alt

Shrugs ..

Maybe some suitably competent member of PF would do it for love ? Think of the cudos if it couldn't be debunked.

I am not trying to debunk it - nor bunk it for that matter. It's just interesting.

I wasn't referring to crop lines. Do you not see a dark area immediately above her head, narrower than her head, which seems to be part of a rectangle ? It doesn't seem to fit or be consistent with the main picture in any way, therefore it can be assumed that it's part of the girl image. So the question is, what is it ?

It could be that the girl was standing in front of a window frame, or a picture frame, or a narrow doorway, when the girl image was taken - if indeed, a girl image WAS taken.

russ_watters

That could happen with a partially transparent overlay in Photoshop. Since the dark on dark of the shadowed part of her face (ghost faces have shadows on them...?) on the wheel doesn't make for much of a difference in brightness, the mixture of colors doesn't look much different.

To me, the perfectly horizontal line right above her head and the perfectly vertical one to her left make for a pretty obvious Photoshop copy/paste job.

Ivan, you say you know the person it came from - how are you so sure they aren't playing a joke on you?
Who pays for what? A quick look at the camera and/or chip to read the exif data would clear-up an awful lot!

Math Is Hard

I could probably create something in Photoshop that would be very similar at first glance. I would just layer one photo on top of another, adjust the transparency, and erase part of the background so the first photo showed through. Then I would flatten the layers to make a single image. You'd catch me pretty easily just by zooming in on the image and seeing sharp pixel differences where I had erased the background.

To create the image convincingly would take a lot of blending, time, and skill.

Hurkyl

Oooh and there's a line on the bottom too.

Oh my memory is fuzzy, but isn't there some possibility that JPEG compression could leave artifacts in that shape?

russ_watters

If you look closely, there's actually a second ghost in the photo....standing behind her with a weapon of some sort...

This one I'm sure isn't faked, as it doesn't have either the horizontal or vertical lines framing it.

Attached Thumbnails

 

russ_watters

Not really, no. It would take longer to take and email yourself the photos than it would to fake the overlay and for a Photoshop user, the required skill level is pretty low.