Many conspiracy minded people pointed out the striking differences between the various photos in the media of the El Paso shooter, Patrick Crusius. In particular some found it impossible to reconcile the post-shooting mug shot with either the yearbook photo or the selfie-stye profile picture Crusius used online. Here's a typical comparison.They are in fact the same person, Patrick Crusius. The differences are due to a number of factors.The first is that the mugshot initially and widely used by the media is distorted. The photo was released at a printed handout, the AP obtained a photo of this photo, and that's what was used by the media, and very quickly it became the default image, on the left in the comparison above.Even the above video snapshot of someone holding the handout photo is better than the AP image. You can see the face is longer, and paler.But we have the original photo, from the police website:As you can see, there's quite a difference between this and the AP photo-of-a-printoutBut this still looks rather different to the profile picture, and this is where people have the hardest time seeing they are the same person, even with the correct mugshot.But they are in fact the same person. Other than the obvious difference in his hair and glasses, there are two factors. Firstly the skin color difference is down to different lighting, which you can see in the yellow tint in the shirt. This is due to the incandescent light used for the mugshot. We can correct that do a degree:But still the shape of the face seems very different. This is because of the distance of the camera from his face. The close camera on the right distort the features, making the mouth and nose larger. Compare these two photos:They are both photos of me, taken within a minute of each other from different distances. The shape of my head appears radically different. In the "mugshot" style photo the camera is a reasonable distance away, ten feet or more. My eyes, nose and mouth appear smaller, my ears and hair seem larger. In the "selfie" photo the camera is very close. My ears seem to fold back, and the overall shape of my head is more oval.Combine that distortion with the images being taken at different times, different hair, no glasses, and under very different circumstances, and it's easy to see why they are so different.So with all that in mind, look again at these four photos.They do in fact show the same person. Patrick Crusius[Update #1]There's another profile pic, seemingly taken from a bit closer and lower. This gives even more distortion, making the nose and face appear more rounded. Here I duplicate the general effect with my iPhone front camera. Both bottom photos are me, not cropped, just slightly different camera position and expression, plus glasses. My face is less oval, so it does not bulge as much, but the difference is the same.