Identifying fake ‘leaked’ photos of Apple products

Shout-outs to Apple lovers. Catcalls to Apple haters. Because this article of mine is going to tell Apple lovers how to not be tricked by people who know their ways of fabricating fake photos. With digital manipulation strategies, people have their way of making or morphing photos to mislead large audience. I am pretty sure you have come across a lot of photos of iPhone and iPad versions yet to arrive with features that were never intended by the CEOs and designers in the first place. With more Apple products to be launched in the coming months, there’s no reason to think this will abate. But here are a few strategies that you can use to spot the fake ones quite easily and keep you foolproof. Ready to go?

This image below was supposedly ‘leaked’ version of iPhone 6 but was later shown to be unofficial renderings by Martin Hajek via Twitter.

iphone

  • The first strike is when you notice that the photo is blurry. And this is especially your evidence when the blur looks mysterious and unprofessional and is consistent across multiple shots. But why are these blurry? Because the blur effect abets people skilled in photoshop in removing or modifying features, or even adding chimerical features.
  • The next strike is the lighting. Check on the reflections of light in the image. This one has quite a lot of unnecessary lighting from unknown light sources.
  • Now, you must look out for shadows. In the above picture, you can spot a small rectangular shadow towards the bottom-center (near the visible ports of the gadgets.)

It’s impossible that you overlook these three commonly visible errors, but just in case, I’ll give you one more thing to look out for. Normal grain in a photo is a consequence of low light, so next time you notice grains when the photo is taken in good-lighting, and the reason is that it has obviously been blurred because it was edited.

Well, the oddities are actually endless. But if you are on a careful watch, they’ll surprisingly look pretty obvious. Be watchful and insightful!