Playing with contrast/brightness sliders makes Apollo pics look funny

[Cat Not Included]

Just ran across this on, of all the strange places, a board game site that I frequent where someone (who I would be willing to make a small bet is a poster familiar to the users of this boards) has bounced from flat-earthing to Apollo being a hoax. Most of what he's posting is straight up HB copy/paste, but he's actually brought up one (fairly strange) claim that I have not seen before. I'm wondering if the experts on here have.

Basically, he's claiming that if you fiddle with the brightness/contrast settings on certain images from Apollo, it looks really strange.

Not much of a claim (even assuming he's showing a genuine image), since:
A) A scan of an original won't have the same properties.
B) Yeah, if you load up a random photo you yourself have taken and play with the brightness/contrast settings it can look pretty strange. (Naturally, I went and did just this out of curiosity :p )

Still, wondering if anyone else has seen this claim before. Kind of curious as to whether anyone can identify this guy.

The original thread is here:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/21869359#21869359

[Allan F]

Yes, it is a standard idea - where JPG compression artefacts show up. Google "Glass buildings on the moon".

[Willoughby]

The pictures ARE edited - that's why artifacts are showing up.  They are edited by someone trying to make it look like NASA edited them, though.  I'll just use one example because I recognized it immediately - and knew it would be easy to find, but here is the original picture of Buzz coming down the ladder (the one with the Earth in the background on the "edited" photo)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/21037483754/in/album-72157658601662068/

In this one, they've clearly used some sort of clone tool to extend the surface off toward the left and then added the Earth in as well.  You can even clearly see if you follow the shadow of the LM (in the "edited" photo) where the shadow is cut off where the original picture ended where they started extending the surface.  It's actually a pretty horrible Photoshop job.  These kinds of things are what make me sick.  The people who are doing this are obviously well aware that they are entirely fabricating evidence to support their nonsense.   Obviously, this is not a NASA edit.  For starters, NASA would not have access to the tools necessary to do these sorts of edits in 1969.  Photoshop didn't come around until 1988.

 

[Cat Not Included]

Holy cow. When I first saw the "altered" photos I'd just mostly skimmed past without looking at them in detail (since I didn't really expect to see anything interesting). Just looked at them in more detail after posting this - and those photos that are "slider adjusted" look pretty ridiculous.

[bknight]

The pictures ARE edited - that's why artifacts are showing up.  They are edited by someone trying to make it look like NASA edited them, though.  I'll just use one example because I recognized it immediately - and knew it would be easy to find, but here is the original picture of Buzz coming down the ladder (the one with the Earth in the background on the "edited" photo)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/21037483754/in/album-72157658601662068/

In this one, they've clearly used some sort of clone tool to extend the surface off toward the left and then added the Earth in as well.  You can even clearly see if you follow the shadow of the LM (in the "edited" photo) where the shadow is cut off where the original picture ended where they started extending the surface.  It's actually a pretty horrible Photoshop job.  These kinds of things are what make me sick.  The people who are doing this are obviously well aware that they are entirely fabricating evidence to support their nonsense.   Obviously, this is not a NASA edit.  For starters, NASA would not have access to the tools necessary to do these sorts of edits in 1969.  Photoshop didn't come around until 1988.

Either the link is incorrect or I am blind as there is no Earth in any of the included images.

[Willoughby]

Holy cow. When I first saw the "altered" photos I'd just mostly skimmed past without looking at them in detail (since I didn't really expect to see anything interesting). Just looked at them in more detail after posting this - and those photos that are "slider adjusted" look pretty ridiculous.

The thing is though, the "slider adjusted" photos are legitimately what you would expect if you drastically altered brightness/contrast and perhaps added some other effects to the "originals" they have made the slider adjustments to.  The problem is that their so-called "originals" are everything but original.  That's the point I was trying to make.  Look at what they call the "original".  It's not the original.  They are clearly edited.  And THEN the made slider adjustments to these edited photos and of course artifacts from cloning, pasting, etc. are going to show up because they are the ones who edited the originals before making their slider adjustments.

Put simply, the hoaxers have planted evidence of editing - and then used the sliders to show their planted evidence.  It's just sickening.

[Willoughby]

Either the link is incorrect or I am blind as there is no Earth in any of the included images.[/quote]

I'm sorry.  My link was to the original photograph (which does not contain the Earth).  Use the link provided by the OP to find the same image edited to extend the foreground and add an Earth (edits an unknown hoaxer made).  They (hoaxers) THEN used contrast adjustments to reveal these edits (which they made) in an attempt to support their claim that NASA edited the images.  My link is to the original unedited image.  When I refer to the "edited" image, I am referring to the image in the link to the thread provided by the OP.  Sorry for the confusion.

[raven]

Wow. It's one thing when a conspiracy theorist is merely ignorant, I mean, everyone is ignorant about many different things, but when they actually intentionally lie like this? That actually makes me rather mad.

[Cat Not Included]

The thing is though, the "slider adjusted" photos are legitimately what you would expect if you drastically altered brightness/contrast and perhaps added some other effects to the "originals" they have made the slider adjustments to.

Wow, really? I guess I can believe "added some other effects" - I couldn't get anything like what those photos show just using brightness/contrast!

[Sus_pilot]

I like his comment about the Apollo 17 liftoff video:  "1969 technology".  How long have remote-controlled servo motors been around?  At least since before WWII with ship and aircraft fire control systems.  The biggest problem for Fendell was timing when to pan the camera...

[Willoughby]

Just for the heck of it, I've made some similar slider adjustments to the actual original.  No artifacts of course.

[raven]

I like his comment about the Apollo 17 liftoff video:  "1969 technology".  How long have remote-controlled servo motors been around?  At least since before WWII with ship and aircraft fire control systems.  The biggest problem for Fendell was timing when to pan the camera...

And making sure the astronauts parked the rover the right distance.

[Willoughby]

The thing is though, the "slider adjusted" photos are legitimately what you would expect if you drastically altered brightness/contrast and perhaps added some other effects to the "originals" they have made the slider adjustments to.

Wow, really? I guess I can believe "added some other effects" - I couldn't get anything like what those photos show just using brightness/contrast!

Perhaps I'm not being clear.  There is no problem with the "slider adjusted" photos.  The problem is with the supposed "originals" (note that originals is in quotes) they are applying these "slider adjustments" to.  They are not originals; they are edited, so if they apply "slider adjustments" to these edited originals, of course they are going to get artifacts because the photos are legitimately edited (by THEM; not NASA).

You don't get the same results when you edit the originals because you are applying the adjustments to the actual originals which have not been edited, so you are not going to see evidence of edits.  I'm not endorsing the claim that NASA edited the photos.

[bknight]

Then this looks like an Adrian post unless someone else used the name.  He accuses NASA of altering images!

[raven]

Then this looks like an Adrian post unless someone else used the name.  He accuses NASA of altering images!

Is he competent enough to attempt even this kind of photochoppery though?