The Great Big "Is it, or isnt it" Investigation Thread

[cylnz]

Hi all, We dont seem to have a goto Fake/Edit/Wrong woman Celebrity Thread, so, since I've been happily looking into those things the last 30 years or so, I thought this would be a good place.

I invite everyone who has a suspect image to post it here with whatever evidence either way you can drum up to prove/disprove the pic/s.

Please dont waste our time with obvious fakes or just plain stupid shit.

IMO, real soon now, AI will start being used to great effect to edit old photos in a realistic way (instead of the cartoon stupid we have now). That's going to present amazing possibilities/problems in the near future.

Imagine the potential to "uncensor" old film clips like Teri Hatcher in Heaven's Prisoners, or to reverse the blue filter on the Salma Hayek Ask the Dust ocean scene.

Anyway, welcome, and have a good argument over whether it's real or not, in female celebland

[cylnz]

no 1. Saved as Kim Basinger from a usenet post, mid '90s, supposedly from 1990-92 Germany.
Base Pic:


pic rotated to what seems normal:


evidence of non-editing:

[cylnz]

From looking at the pic from various modes/layers/zooms it all looks like it's not been mucked about. Even at 2000% zoom the pixels all grade the same, no smudge tool, no cut-ins, no resolution variations.

I dont see any reason to think it's not a single image.

Now, the question is, is it Kim?

[cylnz]

Here's a very common, but technically weird as hell Monica Bellucci pic.
original as downloaded:

and this is 1 operation "equalize":

what the fuck is that?

here is the equalized layer + original layer on vivid light:



other modes and layer extractions:


Looking at it, and considering, I dont think the water reflection ever really existed. I think Monica was just standing there fully nude and the photographer cropped her at hip level and used photo manipulation to knock out the entire background set, (including some sort of mirror or framework) and digitally added in a water reflection, after "improving" her body shape.

If anyone has a better idea, share it, because that's the only series of edits I can get to make sense.