The Last Photo (again)

http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/m/katebedside.jpg

The shadows are all wrong and gerrys only got three fingers.

I believe some of the photo's have been 'enhanced' for sales purposes,ie the Everton shirt and 'Soham' photo.The 'last picture' could have any date they wanted on it,could have been taken anytime,so doesn't mean much really as there is already overwhelming evidence of how the mccanns set about manipulating the whole story.

want the truth wrote:C.Edwards, when you were on the Jill Havern forum you will have seen the analysis of the weather preceding 3rd May 2007. The historical meteorological information, showing the temperatures during and preceding the week that the McCanns were present, plus information from local gardeners and hotel owners, show cold weather.
Bougainvillea can only come into full flowering bracts when it has had several (around 5) days, with continuously some 5 hours a day of hot sunshine.
The bougainvillea behind Maddie in the playground picture, just 4 days before the pool photo, is hardly past first shoot stage and certainly nowhere near to flowering.
Since all witness statements, including second-hand statements from Kate's mum, talk of colder than expected weather, rain, such that tennis was canceled, children coming off the beach cold and miserable, then there is no question that the bougainvillea would have been in flower, such that is seen in the purported 3rd May 2007 last photo on the background at the pool.
So, apart from numerous observations from people with and without photo-shopping skills, including people who can see inconsistencies in shadow angle and intensity, how do you explain the full flowering background.
The devil is in the detail. The photo-shopper, concentrating so hard on developing an image that they would hope would seem credible did not look from a gardener, or botanist's point of view and check that the bigger picture did not blow the gaff.
You insist that you are correct and we should believe you. As others have said, there are many expert photo-shoppers who have analysed the photos, and even people without such skills, such as myself, albeit a gardener and botanist who can see errors which defy the verity of the claim that the photo was take on 3rd May 2007.

I've been studying the flowers recently too. It appears that other photos taken from the same/similar location of the pool area do not seem to show the same abundance of flowers and/or foliage. The photo of Madeleine dressed in a pink top and (darker pink) trousers standing in front of the tree - the wall behind her appears to have little or no bloom but then it's difficult to be certain considering it's a cut down version of the fuller photograph (with Lily Payne standing next to Madeleine) and may have blooms further along the wall. I've spent a good part of today searching Google to no avail. Does anyone have the full version?

Iris wrote:It is very difficult to tell for certain because the image is such poor quality, but I actually think it's a different hat too.

Going by the framed photo it looks as if the person who printed it out forgot to maintain the aspect ratio and ended up with a 'squat' photo. This isn't exactly the same end result but it gives some idea how a photograph can change appearance (not forgetting that I haven't got the same angle as the video shows):

Screeenshot taken from the video:




Crop from the so-called 'last photo'


Height shortened (squat)



The following changes are only to emulate the screenshot.

Colour changed to B&W



Blur added



Brightness and contrast altered

SashaM wrote:

Iris wrote:It is very difficult to tell for certain because the image is such poor quality, but I actually think it's a different hat too.

Going by the framed photo it looks as if the person who printed it out forgot to maintain the aspect ratio and ended up with a 'squat' photo. This isn't exactly the same end result but it gives some idea how a photograph can change appearance (not forgetting that I haven't got the same angle as the video shows):

Screeenshot taken from the video:




Crop from the so-called 'last photo'


Height shortened (squat)
;


The following changes are only to emulate the screenshot.

Colour changed to B&W



Blur added:
Ittthari
I

Brightness and contrast altered

That could be right Sasha, and makes sense. But then the photos would no longer be identical and the different aspect ratios would be obvious when they were layered, they wouldn't map exactly, now would they?

SashaM wrote:

Iris wrote:It is very difficult to tell for certain because the image is such poor quality, but I actually think it's a different hat too.

Going by the framed photo it looks as if the person who printed it out forgot to maintain the aspect ratio and ended up with a 'squat' photo. This isn't exactly the same end result but it gives some idea how a photograph can change appearance (not forgetting that I haven't got the same angle as the video shows):

Screeenshot taken from the video:




Crop from the so-called 'last photo'


Height shortened (squat)



The following changes are only to emulate the screenshot.

Colour changed to B&W



Blur added



Brightness and contrast altered

fabulous piece of work. I had looked on google to see if you could make a person taller, and found site after site showing how, but what you have done is amazing. So is the villa bedroom picture the original and the last pool one an elongation of it, do you think. Given that Gerry had to go back to find it, and that it wasn't on Kate's camera available for the police immediately, plus those clothes were not handed to the police for the dogs to follow.

want the truth wrote:

SashaM wrote:

Iris wrote:It is very difficult to tell for certain because the image is such poor quality, but I actually think it's a different hat too.

Going by the framed photo it looks as if the person who printed it out forgot to maintain the aspect ratio and ended up with a 'squat' photo. This isn't exactly the same end result but it gives some idea how a photograph can change appearance (not forgetting that I haven't got the same angle as the video shows):

Screeenshot taken from the video:




Crop from the so-called 'last photo'


Height shortened (squat)



The following changes are only to emulate the screenshot.

Colour changed to B&W



Blur added



Brightness and contrast altered

fabulous piece of work. I had looked on google to see if you could make a person taller, and found site after site showing how, but what you have done is amazing. So is the villa bedroom picture the original and the last pool one an elongation of it, do you think. Given that Gerry had to go back to find it, and that it wasn't on Kate's camera available for the police immediately, plus those clothes were not handed to the police for the dogs to follow.

Yes, it's making sense to me now too. I kept looking at the framed photo and thinking that the hair looked like it was curling just under the chin, but in the photo with Gerry in the hair looked like it was curling further down. However, somehow they photos looked the same!

So WHY would you want a blurred, squaty, photo of your disappeared daughter instead of a lovely 'crop' from the 'last' photo by pool?
No alteration needed at all!
Was the squaty the 'original' blown up, stretched, colour added, and put into 'last' photo or vice versa?

wouldn't the glass(cant see it but its usual) covering the photo & the camera angle of the video being taken, distort the picture we are seeing?

matthew wrote:wouldn't the glass(cant see it but its usual) covering the photo & the camera angle of the video being taken, distort the picture we are seeing?

But even then, why have a black and white one when a perfectly good coloured crop (which they used on various occasions) is available?

Slightly OT but from the book:

Some images are etched for all time on my brain. Madeleine that lunchtime is one of them. She was wearing an outfit I’d bought especially for her holiday: a peach-coloured smock top from Gap and some white broderie-anglaise shorts from Monsoon – a small extravagance, perhaps, but I’d pictured how lovely she would look in them and I’d been right. She was striding ahead of Fiona and me, swinging her bare arms to and fro. The weather was a little on the cool side and I remember thinking I should have brought a cardigan for her, although she seemed oblivious of the temperature, just happy and carefree. I was following her with my eyes, admiring her. I wonder now, the nausea rising in my throat, if someone else was doing the same.unquote

Why should Kate be thinking 'the same' as the putative paedophile? That's implied in the wording.
However lovely a toddler looks, 'admire' isn't the verb I'd use.
Most of all, some 'images' - it seems she is thinking of a photograph again. But she gets the colour wrong. So was she thinking of the black and white photograph, taken some considerable time before 3/5? The weather looks anything but on 'the cool side.'

So what if a picture was taken at the time they say?

It wasn't off Madeleine.


It's looks like all that day they were setting the scene and putting the plan into place.

Is the last photo black & white? i couldn't say for sure,the video is of a poor quality? i dont believe it was taken on the 3rd of May & if it is photoshopped i bow down to superior knowledge,i can't see why the full photo would not be used & the picture frame used for the last photo with a cross sign befits a known 'last photo'

Lioned wrote:The shadows are all wrong and gerrys only got three fingers.

I believe some of the photo's have been 'enhanced' for sales purposes,ie the Everton shirt and 'Soham' photo.The 'last picture' could have any date they wanted on it,could have been taken anytime,so doesn't mean much really as there is already overwhelming evidence of how the mccanns set about manipulating the whole story.

I'm sorry, but that's a ridiculous thing to say. Firstly WHY are the shadows "all wrong" and provide reasoned argument, not just "it's my opinion" as that's not very scientific.

Gerry has only 3 fingers? Are you serious? Have you really looked at the large version of the picture?

AnnaEsse wrote:

C.Edwards wrote:

AnnaEsse wrote:

Nope! And that's my opinion. Try not to express your opinion as fact.

It IS a fact! I've overlaid it on two separate layers on screen, it is ABSOLUTELY identical!

I missed that! Will look back.

ETA Can't find where you posted that.

I meant I've done it at home to check. But I've now made a nice animated gif for you so you can see for yourself, no smoke and mirrors at all.


The "alone" picture of Madeleine with the blurred surround is cropped from the original. All they've done is stamp other bits of the background (badly) over Amelie's and Gerry's arms. They've also stamped grass over the shadow of the recliner and they've done that badly too as they've lost part of Madeleine's hat and top of the wall. They've then blurred the rest to make their shoddy work look less shoddy.

It's not a conspiracy theory on this, it's a simple crop of a large picture to give a reasonable sized "alone" picture of Madeleine. You CANNOT do this the other way around and make a detailed non-blurred image from the "alone" one. It's one way only. Once you blur, you move the pixels and the detail is gone forever. Anyone suggesting the "alone" picture is the original and got "pasted" into the other one is really in need of a good hard think, I'm afraid.

But, hey, I'm sure Iris and others will be along shortly to tell me that other proper photoshop experts have said it can be done so, whatever.

Haha, Gerry with three fingers, in Japanese Manga art, if somebody has three fingers that means that they are the villain of the story. So even if Gerry doesn't have three fingers in the photo, maybe he should.

C.Edwards wrote:

AnnaEsse wrote:

C.Edwards wrote:

AnnaEsse wrote:

Nope! And that's my opinion. Try not to express your opinion as fact.

It IS a fact! I've overlaid it on two separate layers on screen, it is ABSOLUTELY identical!

I missed that! Will look back.

ETA Can't find where you posted that.

I meant I've done it at home to check. But I've now made a nice animated gif for you so you can see for yourself, no smoke and mirrors at all.


The "alone" picture of Madeleine with the blurred surround is cropped from the original. All they've done is stamp other bits of the background (badly) over Amelie's and Gerry's arms. They've also stamped grass over the shadow of the recliner and they've done that badly too as they've lost part of Madeleine's hat and top of the wall. They've then blurred the rest to make their shoddy work look less shoddy.

It's not a conspiracy theory on this, it's a simple crop of a large picture to give a reasonable sized "alone" picture of Madeleine. You CANNOT do this the other way around and make a detailed non-blurred image from the "alone" one. It's one way only. Once you blur, you move the pixels and the detail is gone forever. Anyone suggesting the "alone" picture is the original and got "pasted" into the other one is really in need of a good hard think, I'm afraid.

But, hey, I'm sure Iris and others will be along shortly to tell me that other proper photoshop experts have said it can be done so, whatever.

Sorry, but that's your "proof"?

My youngest could have done that with any picture you like, in about 10 seconds flat.

jeanmonroe wrote:So WHY would you want a blurred, squaty, photo of your disappeared daughter instead of a lovely 'crop' from the 'last' photo by pool?
No alteration needed at all!
Was the squaty the 'original' blown up, stretched, colour added, and put into 'last' photo or vice versa?

They haven't made it blurred! The video is awful quality, the video is blurred. It's like a short-sighted person looking at a photo too far away and asking why it's been made blurred, it's not, it's just the perception of the viewer (the camera in this case) that makes it look blurred.

The original "last photo" when big is 3072 x 2304 pixels. This, in itself, suggests to me that the photo has been resized in photoshop slightly as that's not really a common image size in my experience. Nothing wrong with resizing an image though, doesn't indicate anything weird has been done to it.

The "crop" that created the "alone" picture of Madeleine comes out at about 1270 x 1000 pixels roughly. For magazine print work at 300dpi that would give you a printed photo at good resolution of about 4 x 3 inches. However you can get pretty acceptable results at 150dpi so if printed out at about 8 x 6 inches this would look pretty decent. Blurred close up, but "normal" from a distance. I can see exactly why they would do it as it is a reasonable way to get a picture of Madeleine on her own.

As explained in my previous posts, you cannot put back lost detail. The only way this works is for the "standalone" picture to have been created from the "group" picture.

Iris wrote:

Sorry, but that's your "proof"?

My youngest could have done that with any picture you like, in about 10 seconds flat.

Iris... you are really annoying individual. When you've finished rolling on the floor please would you explain just where your problem is with this. I suspect you have the technical knowledge of a boot, but that's just my opinion. All I've demonstrated is that the cropped image comes from the "last photo". Where, exactly, is your problem with that? The animated gif is about the best way I can think of to prove the origin of the image.

You are making yourself look foolish.

SashaM wrote:

Iris wrote:It is very difficult to tell for certain because the image is such poor quality, but I actually think it's a different hat too.

Going by the framed photo it looks as if the person who printed it out forgot to maintain the aspect ratio and ended up with a 'squat' photo. This isn't exactly the same end result but it gives some idea how a photograph can change appearance (not forgetting that I haven't got the same angle as the video shows):

Screeenshot taken from the video:




Crop from the so-called 'last photo'


Height shortened (squat)



The following changes are only to emulate the screenshot.

Colour changed to B&W



Blur added



Brightness and contrast altered

Well done Sasha! The photo does look odd but the photo itself is much smaller in height hence the anomolies.

My questions to C Edwards is

WHY change a perfectly excellent photo of Madeleine, by pool, to anything other than what it is?

WHY would you alter it at all?

WHY not buy a frame to 'fit' a crop from the 'original' last photo.

No colour change, no size change, no 'changes' needed at all.

WHY all the 'changes' for the bedside photo?

C.Edwards wrote:

Iris wrote:

Sorry, but that's your "proof"?

My youngest could have done that with any picture you like, in about 10 seconds flat.

Iris... you are really annoying individual. When you've finished rolling on the floor please would you explain just where your problem is with this. I suspect you have the technical knowledge of a boot, but that's just my opinion. All I've demonstrated is that the cropped image comes from the "last photo". Where, exactly, is your problem with that? The animated gif is about the best way I can think of to prove the origin of the image.

You are making yourself look foolish.

I'm not the one running about here telling people that they are stupid, that they are imagining things, that they don't understand things, and that they have the knowledge of a boot. I actually have some respect for my fellow posters. Well, most of them. I have zero respect for you, so I really don't care whether I am annoying you or not, or what your deluded ego percieves my intelligence to be. Nobody likes to be preached to and patronised. Perhaps you should have a good think about why you are not welcome on Jill's or Amazon anymore.

jeanmonroe wrote:So WHY would you want a blurred, squaty, photo of your disappeared daughter instead of a lovely 'crop' from the 'last' photo by pool?
No alteration needed at all!
Was the squaty the 'original' blown up, stretched, colour added, and put into 'last' photo or vice versa?

I think the appearance of greyscale and the blur is caused by the video camera. The only true distortion is the ‘squat’ print out which is probably the result my hubby would end up with if he tried to print a photo.

My changing the crop to B&W and blurring it was only to emulate the distortion caused by the video camera which we’re seeing. I'm not suggesting that they deliberately changed it to B&W or that they blurred it :\

Personally I can’t imagine any of the people having been photoshopped into the ‘last photo’. As someone previously pointed out, Madeleine has wisps’ of hair that would be lost in cut and paste, the same with the fine hairs on Gerry’s arms.

Edited to delete the end part of my post because I now realise it's misleading and not at all helpful.

Thank you to all who commented on my previous effort - it helps me understand where I may have gone wrong or what parts I may have right

C.Edwards wrote:

Iris wrote:

Sorry, but that's your "proof"?

My youngest could have done that with any picture you like, in about 10 seconds flat.

Iris... you are really annoying individual. When you've finished rolling on the floor please would you explain just where your problem is with this. I suspect you have the technical knowledge of a boot, but that's just my opinion. All I've demonstrated is that the cropped image comes from the "last photo". Where, exactly, is your problem with that? The animated gif is about the best way I can think of to prove the origin of the image.

You are making yourself look foolish.

Iris looking foolish? Not to those of us who have known her on this board and others for quite some time. In fact, it is not Iris who is so arrogantly patronising that she doesn't recognise sarcasm when she sees it! You have decided to grace us with your presence for some reason, having been thrown out of Jill's for reasons that I fully understand. I suggest that you now do some planning and look out for your next port of call if you are not willing to change your attitude towards well-respected members of this forum.

jeanmonroe wrote:My questions to C Edwards is

WHY change a perfectley excellent photo of Madeleine, by pool, to anything other than what it is?
I'm guessing that they wanted an image of Madeleine only. You can see from the animated gif I did that just cropping it would have resulted in Amelie's and Gerry's arms being visible. Someone probably thought they were doing them a favour by creating an image of Madeleine on her own? Don't know but it's possible.

WHY would you alter it at all?
Answered above. Leaving the visible bits of arms from others in the shot distracts from Madeleine?

WHY not buy a frame to 'fit' a crop from the 'original' last photo.
Oh come on! Maybe that's the only frame they had? Why didn't they fit it in the other way round? Who knows. They put it in a frame they thought suitable. That's like saying it's suspicious they didn't set up 3 spotlights to shine on it or something. We can't level criticisms at them for aesthetic choices, surely? Well I won't, anyway.

No colour change, no size change, no 'changes' needed at all.
It was obviously done by someone without much graphic skill. A lot of the changes you're referring to are caused by perception due to the camera angle foreshortening the image in the video.

WHY all the 'changes' for the bedside photo?
I simply think they were trying to improve a picture for a single shot of Madeleine and it wasn't done very well

Look - here you go. I spent twenty minutes doing a quick job here using the full cropped size to show it's easily possible to achieve better results. No doubt Iris's pet dog could have done it with both paws behind its back in 10 seconds, but anyway:

Step 1: Full size crop from original

As you can see, (well I can) it's intrusive and distracting to have the arms from Gerry and Amelie showing.

So...
Step 2: Use clone brush to start cleaning it up using parts of background as cover

You can see I've started using parts of the wall and grass to cover over the arms

Step 3: Keep using clone brush

As you can see, Gerry's arm is gone now. Also the dark shadow from the recliner is gone. No point in keeping it there as it's distracting so I've used the brighter grass to cover it over. I've also used part of the wall top from the right to create a fake wall top on the left. Bit messy at present, but I'll clean that up.

Step 4: Almost done with clone brush now

All of Amelie and Gerry gone from picture now. Trouble is the wall on the left is too artificial. The cloning process clearly shows in the repeating patterns in the stone. Also the grass line up at the top where it's in front of the tree is a bit samey at the extreme left. Paving stone pattern to the left is also a bit poor.

Step 5: Make it all look a bit more natural

So I used bits of the weeds on the right to create some fake vegetation on the left. Also cleaned up the easy to spot repeating patterns in the wall and used bits elsewhere to make it look more natural. It's still a long way from perfect, but this is a "quick job" after all... Trouble is, the finished result looks harsh and poorly exposed... time to fix that now.

Step 6: The final result

It won't win awards, but it's not bad for a quick go. No need for the crappy blurring of the background to hide the poor clone brush work as this has been done a bit more carefully. A bit of sharpening, a bit of colour correction and apart from a few blurred areas I'm aware of, that would look quite nice printed out. Maybe I should send it to the McCanns, eh? ;-)

FFS C.Edwards! Stop taking up our bandwidth with your bleedin' lectures! We don't need them. Any more of this shoite and you're gone! Like a lost fridge!