What's with that picture?

Corrected image.

Many of you raised questions as to the above (now corrected) picture we published in our previous post. We agreed that something didn't seem right with the proportions around the nose (though the idea of separate heads stitched together seemed a little too far-fetched), so we passed it on to our toupological labs. They found another example of the same photo...


...and despite the low quality, found that the prior image had indeed been digitally distorted for some strange reason. Watch the video below to see how the nose shifts downwards in the distorted image and how we then went about correcting it:

Upon closer inspection, it also appears that the original print (meaning not just a digital copy of it) may have been altered too, possibly at the request of Bill Shatner. Notice an unusually dark patch in the hair:


The peak whites or highlights of that area appear to be subdued in a manner out of synch with the rest of the image. Such irregularities are often indicative of photo-manipulation:


What this would suggest is that when the photo was being printed in the dark room, the above area of the photographic paper was exposed to the negative projection from the enlarger for just a little longer, darkening the area a little (more light equals more darkness in photographic printing). This is a very common practice in the dying art of film-based photography. The altered print would then be rephotographed and that negative would become the official photo.

If we lift the area in question, we see what the original photograph might have looked like:


This being a publicity photo, it is perfectly understandable for Shats, concerned about his thinning hair in the picture and the effect that this might have on his public image (we do hold that it is a toup-less photo) to have asked for the photographer to do everything he could to conceal this. In this case, it appears that this was done by darkening an area of the hair as well as developing the entire image with a high contrast (notice how black the blacks are) to keep the hair looking as dark/thick as possible.

Just to add, we have now replaced the distorted image in the previous post with the repaired version and entirely substituted the wider photo for the alternative version.