"Well, You Have To Admit...It IS Very Lifelike...."

The common expression used to be “don’t believe everything you read”.

And that was okay because, for the longest time, we had the comfort of “seeing is believing”.

Not any more.

Photoshop pretty much took care of that.

Now anybody with sixty bucks to spend on software and some time to learn how to play with it can create just about any picture they want.

And sometimes the pictures are so good that they become reality.
Whether they are real or not.

Like the infamous picture of that guy standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Center with the jetliner coming up behind him on September 11.

Or, more recently, the Shanghai tiger.

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- It all started with a farmer, a photo and a claim -- a sighting of a rare tiger in the local woods, curled up and staring right at the camera.

The tiger story began when Zhou Zenghlong, a 54-year-old farmer and hunter, heard that a person could win more than 1 million yuan (about US$146,000) for finding an

endangered South China tiger in the wild, where it hadn't been seen in more than 20 years, according to state media accounts.

Last October, he emerged from the woods in Shaanxi with his claim of a tiger sighting, plus dozens of digital photos.

Officials in Shaanxi embraced his claim, awarding him 20,000 yuan (about US$2,920) and praise at a press conference little more than a week later.

"After the careful examination, experts confirmed the authenticity of the photos. That means the tiger has been found again after more than 20 years," the China Daily newspaper quoted Shaanxi Forestry Administration Bureau Deputy Director Zhu Julong as saying.

The tiger had been thought to be extinct in the wild. The World Wildlife Fund describes its wild population as "perhaps a few individuals."

The glow didn't last. China's

online community almost immediately suspected a fake. The tiger was too shiny, they said. And no matter where it was snapped among the trees, its position never changed.

When someone came up with an old poster with a photo that looked strikingly like the tiger and posted it online, the public called for an official investigation.
But Shaanxi officials stuck to their story.

With a rare tiger in their area, the officials knew they could bring in a lot of money by boosting tourism and creating a nature reserve, said Yu, the university professor.

Finally, under increasing pressure, the Shaanxi officials confirmed the photos as a hoax this week. Zhou was arrested on charges of fraud, accused of propping up the poster in the woods and shooting it with a borrowed digital camera.

G likes to say that everything is a trade off.

So the price that we pay for the availability of user friendly technology like Photoshop is the need to more carefully scrutinize what we see and not accept, with blind faith, that what we see is automatically what we get.

So keep in mind that, thanks to said technology, you can no longer simply look at a photograph and assume it to be legitimate.

Because Photoshop is affordable for just about any budget.
And it can do some amazing things.

Like that picture at the top of this piece.

Hillary’s people swear that it’s a picture of the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States.

But look closer.

It’s really not.

Man. That Photoshop is something else.