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Robert Daigle | Why The Morgan Freeman Finger Painting is Probably Fake
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Why The Morgan Freeman Finger Painting is Probably Fake

Heres why the Morgan Freeman Finger Painting is probably fake, I’m wrong and my friends are douchebags.

Like many of you, I was in awe of the genius and talented painting of Morgan Freeman by Kyle Lambert I felt that I had to share it with the Facebook world. This sparked an intense debate on the legitimacy of the painting (read it here – Facebook ). So I decided to overlay the painting on the original image and what I found is that every line, hair and feature seems to be in the precise place as the original. This doesn’t absolutely mean its fake, but it does make me skeptical.

It doesn’t matter that its fake or real, because it is brilliant. With just short of 6 million views on Youtube in less than 2 days, this is great advertisement for Kyle, Procreate and Apple. Marketing Win.

Original/Painting

 

Here is the original with the painting overlay in a 50% opacity. If the proportions were even slightly off, his face would appear blurry.

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Video

Credit
Painted by Kyle Lambert – www.kylelambert.co.uk
Original Photograph Taken by Scott Gries – www.scottgries.com

AUTHOR - Rob

Web guru, marketing manager, adventure seeker and part-time blogger. Get to know me.

15 Comments

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  • Why the Morgan Freeman finger painting is probably not fake | Barnes Technical Consulting Blog

    […] hasn’t stopped skeptics like Robert Daigle to take a closer look at the image by overlaying the painting on top of the original photograph. […]

  • [TechNews][TUAW]Why the Morgan Freeman finger painting is probably not fake | Without working

    […] hasn’t stopped skeptics like Robert Daigle to take a closer look at the image by overlaying the painting on top of the original photograph. […]

  • iPadと指で描かれた「モーガン・フリーマン」そっくりすぎて真贋論争が起こる | ソフトアンテナブログ

    […] 懐疑派のRobert Daigle氏は、オリジナルのモーガン・フリーマン写真と出来上がった肖像画を重ねあわせ、あまりにも似すぎているので偽物っぽいということを主張しています。 […]

  • foljs

    Well, he has a video showing how he did it.

    The picture is not fake — else you can’t explain tens of in-between, all-the-more-realistic interim images he does to arrive to the final result.

    Matching features doesn’t mean much. He probably used the reference photo as the bottom layer, and drew upon it — most drawing programs allow that.

  • Ellis

    You should check out the full zoomed image… https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7U9VXVTij3fbDhkenFwMHczODQ/edit

  • Robnonstop

    More indication that it’s fake and your friends are douchebags: https://twitter.com/RobNonS/status/408985280851369984

  • Andy Dolphin

    Lambert’s statement that the original photo was never “on my iPad or inside the Procreate app” seems somewhat ambiguous. Where was it?

    But his copy isn’t pixel perfect. Scrub your comparison bar back and forth over Freeman’s right eye (the one to the left of frame) and you’ll see quite some differences in shapes. Viewing the files at full size in PS reveals other subtle differences, including his left ear which is missing the gentle S-shape in the copy.

    I’ll reserve my decision on how this was done but it does seem, from looking at the metadata alone (first created in PS CS5 Mac, in 2011), that there’s much more to this story than we’re being told from those in the know. The metadata history in the file downloaded from the artist’s website makes no mention of any other software that I can see. That said, the metadata info is a very new and foreign beast to me and I have no idea how useful it is or whether all software would even add info to it.

    There was a discussion somewhere about another issue in the metadata, but I can’t find it.

  • Alex

    Ultimate proof that is fake:

    http://www.sebastiansdrawings.com/post/69093322933/please-dont-cheapen-genuine-artists

    I beg you to consider that Mr Lambert is not the only person which can do artistic miracles:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDWdLY-qnms&list=WLB1EFEE9E81292B45

    More technical stuff:

  • Kmuzu

    If you have spent any time at all trying to draw something original in PS and you have any comprehension of layers, color palette, and scale .. you realize from just comparing the original to the digital painting that this is a fake. Either the artist used the actual picture as a layer or this is just a photo manipulation of the original picture. There is just no possible way to eyeball the exact color and proportion. There are times when I am working on my technique that I will try to copy another artists work – just for practice. Often I use a ruler to work out the spacing and even then there are small differences.

  • Robnonstop

    Morgan Freeman iPad Finger Painting (video and image file) nalyzed:
    http://HowToLearnDrawing.com/fake-morgan-freeman-ipad-finger-painting-hoax-debunked/

  • Atula Siriwardane

  • Atula Siriwardane

  • Verité

    “This sparked an intense debate on the legitimately of the painting”… Really? “ligitimately” and I should take you more serious?!

    • robert

      Verité,

      Thank you so much for your insightful and well written critique of this fine literary work (also known as my blog). I can only hope that you go to bed tonight with a feeling of accomplishment, knowing you did your part in eliminating the grammatical errors running rampant on the World Wide Web. With your attention to detail and dedicated understanding of the English language, you have probably corrected most spelling and grammatical errors that could be found on the Internet today. My blog was more than likely the final frontier for you. For your hard work and dedication, would you like a cookie or a gold star?

      -Robert

  • Johnd357

    Thank you for your blog article. Great. akceeeefdefg

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