Look Closely! Can You Tell Whether These Images Are Real Or Fake?

By: Clement Hall
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Getty Images
Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Especially if it’s a fake? The public seems to have an ever-increasing hunger for fake news and fake images. And to top it off, with all of the easy-to-use tools available on the internet that can be used to manipulate photos, our technology can't even keep up with detecting what's real and what's fake.

Multi-billion dollar companies, like Photoshop, work tirelessly to increase easy-to-use modification tools for photo enthusiasts. But telling the difference between real and fake becomes much more complex as these new tools are created. These advancements allow anyone and everyone to trim a few pounds, place an animal on a celebrity, and even look as if they are traveling to a distant land.

Even though many think of photo manipulation as a skillful art, let's admit it, social media and technological devices have brought a whole new meaning to editing photos. While early manipulation was used for things like retouching photos, airbrushing, and piecing negatives together, today's editing tools are used to deceive the public, improve storytelling, or to make a product or person look better.

People just naturally want to trust a photo. We think of them as moments frozen in time. Put a picture with a story and it even becomes more real. Statistics show people love social media posts with pictures. Did you know a Facebook post with a picture will receive 2.3 times the engagement as a post without visual content?

We've been trained to believe what we see is real, and when it comes to social media, photo editing is used as a form of kicks and jokes. If we're being honest, an edited photo can really make a crappy photo much more appealing, and seeing SnapChat face-swapping photos can be downright hilarious.

I bet you’ve heard the old saying “there’s more to this than meets the eye." Fake photos can be very powerful, and even with a good ole' fashioned warning, some people still take a fake photo as being real. So, you think you know the difference between a real photo and a fake photo? Let's see what your eyes have to say about these images. When you're through with the test, don't say we didn't try and warn you.