Photoshop fail: Family given hilarious creepy faces by 'professional' photographer

Some of us might have hired professional photographers at least once in our lifetime for one of those important family milestone photo shoots. But for this family in the United States, their portraits will be something they'll remember for life.

Pam and Dave Zaring, who are based in Missouri, reportedly paid US$250 (S$330) to a professional photographer for what they thought would be nice family portraits of their 'blended' family in a park in St Louis.

To their horror, what came back many months later were badly retouched images on a scale so epic, the photographs have gone viral over the past few days.

In the mindboggling images, all family members looked like they had just walked out of a 90s video game - their teeth, eyes and skin looked like they were painted on and although funny, they looked kind of creepy too.

Pam told KCEN that her kids were "so confused" by the photos and kept saying that they looked like Lego people.

According to Pam, they were approached by a middle-aged woman in May 2017 who claimed that she was an experienced professional photographer.

They had forgotten about the photos until last week when the photographer told them she was done editing the photos and would send a disc over by post.

When Pam opened the files, she told KCEN that she "never laughed this hard in my life".

She then posted the final photos that she received on her Facebook post on Jan 13.

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/pam.richardcoones/posts/10103240387205162[/embed]

She wrote: "Ok. This is NOT a joke. We paid a photographer, who claimed to be a professional, $2-250 for a family photo shoot. Please see these FOR REAL photos she delivered to us.

"She said the shadows were really bad on the beautiful, clear, sunny day and that her professor never taught her to retouch photos.

"Feel free to share...I literally have not laughed this hard in YEARS!!!!! You can't make this stuff up.....again, this is NOT a joke - final product."

The post has since been shared over 374,000 times with over 193 comments.

In case you're wondering how they really look like, here's an actual family portrait:

Thankfully, Pam finds the entire ordeal hilarious. She has asked the photographer for the original photos but did not ask for a refund.

"This has been worth every dime that we spent", she told KCEN.

The awfully edited photos have also been the subject of Photoshop editing lessons for photography sites ISO1200 and Petapixel.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le2MsFLCR8A[/embed]

So if you're looking at editing (out) someone's face, Pam's photos might be something worth taking note of.

klim@sph.com.sg