15 Photoshopped Pictures – Which Aren’t

We’re a cynical society. The amazing power of image editing software has made us all naysayers, who think that some of the world’s most incredible photos have been touched up in some form.

Take this imposing structure, for example. That looks like it’s been rendered in 3D, transferred to Photoshop, and tweaked.

It’s not. It’s a flood system from Saitama, Japan, and you’re looking at the amazing underbelly of it.

What about this? Playing with the extrude function in Photoshop? Take a look at it from another angle:

That’s right – it’s just completely insane and smart. How about these two kids? They’ve done the old trick of any desperate man on a dating site and Photoshopped their heads (very crudely) onto other people’s bodies.

You can even see the joins between the heads and the bodies!

Well, actually, that’s just bad lighting and a bad tanning job, because both those kids have those bodies. My five pressups a day regime seems puny now.

Freaky, right? Do you know how to do this? Good. Do it, then I can laugh at you for wasting your time, because this is totally real. You can spend all the hours in the world playing with filters and opacity, but you’ll never better this. Nature did it. (And by nature I mean a dumb bird flew into a window and left this imprint.)

When this picture passed through the National Geographic photo desk, they pulled it up and rightly called bullshit. I mean, come on. It’s an oil painting. Right?

Nope. It’s a photo taken in Namibia. The blue is because it’s dawn, the orange ‘sky’ is actually a sand dune, and it’s just…beautiful.

People like to use this photo to demonstrate the difference between Mexico and the USA. The area the Minutemen patrol (on the left) is desolate and quiet; Mexico, a bustling, youthful economy with too little room, runs right up to the border wall.

Ok, again, easy. Woodgrain background, bevel effect on a layer, some blending…ta-da! Shame this is the real-life footprints of a Buddhist monk who has spent three decades praying in the same spot, wearing through the wood.

Holy shit this is real. There’s a person called Krystal Belcher (shame about the name) inside this suit, which looks like some guy decided to go wild with pixels on an ordinary picture of a conference call.

Damn you perspective! You win again!

I know. I said there’s no way this could happen when I saw it too. But then I remembered my time as an amateur air enthusiast, and the fact that the island of St. Maartens has one of the world’s shortest runways, which passes over a beach and road. Then it all fit together.

(I still wouldn’t try to get a tan on that beach, though.)

Everyone say hello to Wendy, a dog which would make you literally shit your pants if you came across it on the street. Wendy’s owner must’ve put her on some major steroids for this to happen.

This isn’t Photoshopped.

Say it with me: this isn’t Photoshopped. It’s actually a charity tennis game played for Nike on the top of the world’s largest tower in Dubai. It’s amazing.

You can actually buy this 85-tool Swiss Army Knife. Whether you could get it into your pocket is another question entirely.

Don’t go thanking Photoshop for this amazing picture. Thank construction. There’s a massive pylon and supporting structure hidden in amongst that waterfall.

Have you spotted any insane pictures which aren’t actually the product of a Photoshop makeover? Let us know below.