The "General Public" and their crap photos.

[boingo82]

I've been intending to whine about this for some time now.
Anyone notice that now that photo printers and digi cams are out, everybody fancies themselves a photographer?

Some of you know what I do for a living. I work at a newspaper. I tone the photos and touch them up so they will look their very best in print. I adjust them to the specs of our specific press and sharpen and size them. It's a lot of fun. Except...

One part of my job is scanning something we call "courtesy mugs". These are the mugshots of the missionaries, Eagle scouts, etc. Anytime somebody gets a churchy type award, we run a little photo and a little bitty article for their family to cut out and tape to the refrigerator. It's a free community service.
I also scan the wedding photos; though these cost money it's about the same thing.

You'd think that knowing their photo was going to be in the paper, (and esp. the wedding photos which are PAID FOR) that people would submit something nice, right? We return the pics afterwards and are very careful, so there's no risk in submitting an original.

Most people are pretty good about it. Then there are the 20% who think that we work magic. They apparently haven't heard the newspaper industry's mantra: "Can't polish a turd."

Here are some selections from this weeks scans. I added a black bar, Glamour-don't style, to protect the dumb asses who submit photos. Other than that they are raw scans.

Hey, printing on inkjet paper is just as good as glossy, right?


I bet if I print this on glossy shit, it'll hide the fact that it's 72dpi, and my inkjet is 10 years old. Right??


I'm just as awesome as those professional retouchers!! I should get PAID for this. You can't even tell there used to be blemishes all over their faces and a big spot of light on the guy's forehead!! *sample* *paint* Man, this paintbrush tool makes me look like a PRO!!


Raw scan, need I say more?



I have gotten 72dpi inkjet prints on laser printer crap paper.

I have gotten 72dpi crap printed off HALFTONE on a 10-year old b/w LASER PRINTER.

I have gotten an emailed scan where I was supposed to do a mugshot, yet the whole guy INCLUDING HIS BODY is less than 150px tall.

I have gotten an emailed scan (several, actually) where they left the WHOLE SCAN BED in the photo, and then downsampled it to 640x480 so they could email it as .BMP format, which renders the actual mugshot to less than 100px square.

I have gotten a PHOTOCOPY of a pic running in another paper (which was bad quality in THAT paper) that they want me to SCAN from the PHOTOCOPY and run in OUR paper!!

Finally, the crowning glory this week, which I should get hazard pay for even TOUCHING...

You'll notice this one has some dirt on it. In fact the whole photo is coated in a waxy-ish yellow-ish film, back and front. It is kind of curled also. I was looking at it trying to figure out what it was, when my coworker read the caption on the back, "Dear daddy, I love you, here is a photo of me," and commented that it was shaped kind of like a butt. Then it hits us. OMFG! The photo is coated in BUTT SWEAT. :apuke. :o :O

[Toksin]

never sending any of my pics to you again...

[HogieGT-R]

ROFLMAO!!!!!! sorry, i know that it sucks ass to deal with shitty photos and whatnot, but damn that's funny as hell!!!!!

[pickle]

Do you know how much this guy is worth/if he's married or looking?/if he has a terminal illness and needs someone to leave his hard earned billions to?

[boingo82]

Originally Posted by Toksin

never sending any of my pics to you again...

Toskie, if every photo submitted was as pretty as yours, I'd die a happy woman.

Originally Posted by pickle

Do you know how much this guy is worth/if he's married or looking?/if he has a terminal illness and needs someone to leave his hard earned billions to?

Given that he's living in S. Utah, he's probably not worth much. If he were, his family would've bought him a 1/4 page "Happy B-day" ad rather than taking advantage of our shitty mugshot service.
If you want me to keep my eye out for a senile old billionare for you though, I will.


The thing that's really pissing me off is that these retards spend 3x as much money to print dog shit on their home printers, as they could have spent taking their CD to WalMart and getting it printed on a real photo printer. C'mon, WalMart is $.19 a print! And how much did you spend on your shitty inkjet with its $35 cartridges? Suppose you got a cheap $100 model... You'd have to make 710 shitty-ass prints on one cartridge JUST TO BREAK EVEN.

[ghostguy6]

Just be thankful your not a mod for an image hosting site, and you thought some of the guys here were sick,..... (*shudders)

[kittedb18bt]

one of my good laughs for the week. had no idea what you had to put up with. thanks for the entertainment.

[Raz_Kaz]

Ah yes, working with the general public is quite amusing.[/sarcasm] Working with peolpe is fun, only if the people your working with arent dumbasses (I'm not trying to hijack the thread but just let you know, that I also have to deal with people like that, in different circumstances). Anyways, my trick is to laugh it off with cooworkers and then do something stupid in return. I would suggest for you to make a cioy for yourself and then pretend to dismantle, kill, fuck up the picture and just...have fun!

[pickle]

Originally Posted by boingo82

Given that he's living in S. Utah, he's probably not worth much. If he were, his family would've bought him a 1/4 page "Happy B-day" ad rather than taking advantage of our shitty mugshot service.
If you want me to keep my eye out for a senile old billionare for you though, I will.

You can be maid of honour if you do, I may even give you $2.5 million NZ (that's only 1.6mil US).

[Toksin]

Put subtle photshops in.

A blemish here, a leprechaun in the background there...

[Toksin]

Originally Posted by boingo82

Toskie, if every photo submitted was as pretty as yours, I'd die a happy woman.

[pickle]

Originally Posted by boingo82

Toskie, if every photo submitted was as pretty as yours, I'd die a happy woman.

Would you still say that if he nippled you?

[boingo82]

Originally Posted by pickle

Would you still say that if he nippled you?

Is that Kiwi slang? Don't know what it means, but it sounds bad.

[zebrathree]

ROFL.

But Fi, you're dead for the mental image.

[boingo82]

Originally Posted by Toksin

Put subtle photshops in.

A blemish here, a leprechaun in the background there...

I am thinking "hitler" moustaches for everyone with a crap photo submission. I can claim it must have been "dirt" on the scan bed.