DPWH Photoshop Fail September 28, 2011

Posted by quiapo in badtrip na naman si pierre Tags: DPWH

I’m a civil engineer by profession and I love my job and if there’s one thing I hate it’s people that fabricate their inspection reports. Why? Inspection reports are very important in our field, if the inspection report is erroneous, this might lead to a wrong and/or costly design. Aside from that, it might lead to a very difficult project implementation, and worse, not prepare others from potential safety risks of the site.

Which is why I was uber-pissed when I was checking my updates in FB at around lunch time yesterday and I saw this:

click on the image to enlarge

Now, if you didn’t have knowledge in Adobe photoshop, you would’ve just glanced at it and moved on with your life, but I’ve used the software since I was in high school (I’m 30 now) so I kinda noticed something weird. Here’s the blow-up of the image from DPWH:

click on the image to enlarge

WTF?! Those three guys seem to be floating on air.

So I re-checked the image and concluded that DPWH fabricated this picture. Why they had to edit it and not just simply compose a photo with all three guys, I do not know. Although my evil mind tells me that the DPWH wants a pogi photo showing their bosses in deep thought while assessing the disaster site, and they didn’t have the opportunity to pose because those guys were probably there for 15 minutes max – so they just lasso tooled the hell out of that pic.

Here are my findings on how lame this photo was ‘shopped.

click on the image to enlarge

Shit, even my mom can do that in CS5. I didn’t even go to lighting analysis because I’m not a photoshop expert, but I sure as hell know that I’m better at photoshop than the guy that did this hack job.

Some say this is a very minor issue, but I see this as a nice sample of DPWH’s lack of integrity. If they can fabricate simple things like this, just imagine what these guys can do to progress billings and acceptance of projects. Also, while relatively mild, isn’t this a classic example of “Utak Wangwang?” While unethical and unnecessary, they thought they could get away with fabricating photos so they tried to.

As of this writing, the DPWH has not apologized for this grave indiscretion.

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Update: After more than a day, they apologized for posting an *uncleared* pic. They didn’t say anything about how much they rely on photoshop though… https://quiapo.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/hey-hey-the-dpwh-apologizes-sort-of/

Update2: My bad, I was sleepy and thought DPWH claimed the inital pic wasn’t photoshopped. I misread it, yung *official pic* pala ang sinasabi ni Mr. Santiago. The initial tirade against Santiago that I posted here was uncalled for. But I’m still pissed at their stupid reasons for the mix-up. Here’s the inquirer.net article: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/67533/photo-of-%E2%80%98floating%E2%80%99-dpwh-officials-causes-uproar-in-cyberspace

Update3: another bopols move by the DPWH https://quiapo.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/another-bopols-move-for-the-dpwh-kisses-bosses-ass-before-appeasing-noynoys-bosses/

Update4: Found a nice fb page collecting photoshopped DPWH images. Check out DPWHERE to de-stress. Also check out plop-culture, one of the first sites that posted DPWH meme images.

Update5: It’s now in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/philippines-officials-photoshop-themselves-into-typhoon-cleanup-photo/2011/09/30/gIQA09OhAL_blog.html

Update6: Pakiusap lang sa mga nagsasabing nakakahiya ang Pilipinas at maging Pilipino dahil sa insidenteng ito. https://quiapo.wordpress.com/2011/10/01/pakiusap-lang/

Update7: DPWH Secretary Singson is embarrassed, aims whip at photographer: https://quiapo.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/dpwh-secretary-singson-embarrassed-aims-whip-at-photographer/

Update8: WTF? Could Sec. Singson’s excuse/reason be made in China? https://quiapo.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/does-singson-dpwh-have-no-originality-pointing-the-blame-on-the-photographer-is-first-made-in-china/



Update9: And now we have CAKE https://quiapo.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/the-dpwh-meme-cake-no-acceptance-celebration-is-complete-without-it-d/