Pseudoscience/NASA Photoshopped Images
NASA's Photoshopped Images
I remember when I was younger I had a huge, glossy, full color book of space. I would flip through the book, stare at these pictures, and my imagination would go wild wondering what wonders could be hidden in the galaxy. These images were accompanied by text, that would describe millions of years after the big gang and the millions of light years away these images supposedly came from. The text was so atheistic it actually made me ill to see how much nonsense was made up, yet, I still loved the images.
After researching flat-earth, I ran across the realization that NASA Photoshops the images. So, not only is the text disgusting, the images are too. Doesn't NASA produce anything worth looking at, have they ever?
The Secret Behind All of NASA's Gorgeous Space Photos? Photoshop, of Course
The images captured by telescopes like Hubble, or even consumer DSLR cameras, are taken over and over at very high quality and then manipulated. Amateur photo editors can use tools like DeepSkyStacker and Nebulosity — there's an entire suite of usable programs — but usually, the stars are heavily Photoshopped.
"I basically take raw grayscale data from different parts of the infrared spectrum, and then remap them into visible colors — typically with red, green and blue Photoshop layers — to create images that are representative of the infrared colors that human eyes cannot see"
Granted, software can be used as a tool to enhance images, which could help the viewer notice things that were too subtle to notice unedited. So, there's a good purpose for images to be Photoshopped. However, when you have to take images and wrap them onto a sphere shape, apply lighting and shadows, and copy and paste clouds - I would argue that you've disqualified that image from being taken seriously.
When Robert Simmon, Lead Data Visualizer and Information Designer at NASA was asked "What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done as part of your job at Goddard?", he said:
The last time anyone took a photograph from above low Earth orbit that showed an entire hemisphere (one side of a globe) was in 1972 during Apollo 17. NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites were designed to give a check-up of Earth’s health. By 2002, we finally had enough data to make a snap shot of the entire Earth. So we did. The hard part was creating a flat map of the Earth’s surface with four months’ of satellite data. Reto Stockli, now at the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, did much of this work. Then we wrapped the flat map around a ball. My part was integrating the surface, clouds, and oceans to match people’s expectations of how Earth looks from space. That ball became the famous Blue Marble.
I was happy with it but had no idea how widespread it would become. We never thought it would become an icon. I certainly never thought that I would become “Mr. Blue Marble.”
Photoshop wasn't invented in the 50's
Photoshop was originally created in 1987, NASA fanboys get triggered when people point out NASA’s pictures are Photoshopped. They will say Photoshop wasn't around in the 50's (back when Nazi's, Freemasons and occultists started NASA). However, believe it or not, people like Stanley Kubrick knew a thing or two about making fake things look real. In Hollywood, there are several techniques to bring realistic images to "life"...
Models
Models are awesome, they brought such detail to the screen. Models were used in movies as early as 1902, for example the movie "A Trip to the Moon" (Le Voyage dans la Lune). Models were superior to the early days of computer aided graphics, and are still used in modern movies.
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NASA building a realistic looking moon model
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NASA building a realistic looking moon model
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these models can be large and very detailed
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Look ma, I'm helping NASA lie to humanity
Drawings/paintings
Why can't you find a good artist near you? because they were all hired by Disney and NASA. All kidding aside, drawings and paintings have been used to represent backdrops in movies sets for decades. They're handy for painting models too. No Photoshop needed here!
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acrylic painting
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pencil drawing
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paintings to capture the imagination
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backdrop for movie
Matte (filmmaking)
Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image (e.g. actors on a set) with a background image (e.g. a scenic vista or a starfield with planets). In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes.
In film, the principle of a matte requires masking certain areas of the film emulsion to selectively control which areas are exposed. However, many complex special-effects scenes have included dozens of discrete image elements, requiring very complex use of mattes and layering mattes on top of one another. For an example of a simple matte, the director may wish to depict a group of actors in front of a store, with a massive city and sky visible above the store's roof. There would be two images—the actors on the set, and the image of the city—to combine onto a third. This would require two masks/mattes. One would mask everything above the store's roof, and the other would mask everything below it. By using these masks/mattes when copying these images onto the third, the images can be combined without creating ghostly double-exposures. In film, this is an example of a static matte, where the shape of the mask does not change from frame to frame. Other shots may require mattes that change, to mask the shapes of moving objects, such as human beings or spaceships. These are known as traveling mattes. Traveling mattes enable greater freedom of composition and movement, but they are also more difficult to accomplish.
Mattes are a very old technique, going back to the Lumière brothers. Originally, the matte shot was created by filmmakers obscuring the background section on the film with cut-out cards. When the live action (foreground) portion of a scene was filmed, the background section of the film wasn't exposed. Then a different cut-out would be placed over the live action section. The film would be rewound, and the filmmakers would film their new background. This technique was known as the in-camera matte and was considered more a novelty than a serious special effect during the late 1880s. A good early American example is seen in The Great Train Robbery (1903) where it is used to place a train outside a window in a ticket office, and later a moving background outside a baggage car on a train 'set'.
Trick photography
Generating images that look real or look sci-fi has been a hobby for many photographers. There's hundreds of tricks these clever people can use.
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camera in a dark room with a circular window. It's fooled people for decades
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stunning trick photography
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I don't know why
Fish-eye/wide angle lens
Go Pro lives Matter! Most of NASA's curved earth clearly relied on fish-eye lenses. You can especially tell when the camera pans around, you will see the distortion caused by this wide angle lens.
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can't have a globe without a curve
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Felix Baumgartner Red Bull jump with fish-eye lens
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NASA's fake curved earth even curves the solar panels
Glue and tape
Back in the early days of movies (remember Buster Keaton), they would physically cut film to splice it together, they could even frame by frame cut out a character then overlay it on another scene. The film "A Trip to the Moon" (Le Voyage dans la Lune) is considered to be the first modern day film. It was developed by Georges Melies in 1902. It is a silent film showing that is about 10 minutes in length. What makes it resemble a modern movie is that it is one continuous film. It is revered by film historians because it incorporated techniques still in use today. The shots of the movie were edited to create a continuous take never before had a movie been edited. The film was made by splicing different takes together which was the first time such a technique was used.
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splicing film
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official film tape
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film cement (glue)
Computer aided graphics
Computer graphics early on was very noticeable and often times very corny, the movie industry was plagued by it in films like “Star Wars Special Edition” (1997), The Mummy Returns (2001), Tron: Legacy (2010), etc. Over the years graphics became higher quality and cheaper to obtain, today you'll be hard pressed to find a movie that doesn't heavily rely on computer aided graphics. Back in the day, they had to rely on physical models to maintain a photo-realistic look.
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3D model the moon
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3D model of moon
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First "proof" of the pear-shaped erf
