Forensic Artist Uses Photoshop To Create… Controversy

You already  know the man on the left, and perhaps you’ve seen the recently released “wanted poster” of what Bin Laden may look like today (center). It’s the man on the right that many of us may not recognize. May I introduce Spanish lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares. Former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament, Llamazares was shocked to hear of the similarities between the Bin Laden poster and his 2004 general election headshot. “I was surprised and angered because it’s the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist,” Llamazares said Saturday at a news conference. “It’s almost like out of a comedy if it didn’t deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens’ security.” The FBI claimed to have used “cutting edge” technology to create the image, but when pressed, revealed that “When producing age-progressed photographs, forensic artists typically select features from a database of stock reference photographs to create the new image. After a preliminary review, it appears that in this instance the forensic artist was unable to find suitable features among the reference photographs and obtained those features, in part, from a photograph he found on the internet.” The poster has since been removed from the State Department’s Rewards for Justice site, but Llamazares has sworn off travel to America saying “Bin Laden’s safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is.” Sadly, this is only runner-up for this week’s criminal abuse of Adobe’s Creative Suite. Check out the train wreck that is the Takers movie poster after the jump. In what I can only assume to be a cost cutting measure, someone’s cousin “who knows how to Photoshop” was paid $20 to paste the heads of legitimate movie stars onto the bodies of stand-ins, then assemble them to vaguely resemble six people at the same photo shoot. Without question, this is the worst work I’ve ever seen from a major studio release.