So sure it's a Photoshop job ? Well, yes and no.
I'd like to take a minute here to address all the comments of how these images are "so clearly" photoshop work. This line of discussion interests me, as knowing and understanding the makeup of digital images is something I do as part of my living, and so I'd like to share my thoughts with you. I'd like to use two specific graphic images as comparison. First I'd like to show you an image which is real. Rather than glut up the thread, I'll provide a link. I do not know where this image originates from, only that it was linked to on the THR forum in a post on the duplicate thread over there. Here is the first pic, you'll be referring back to this one.
http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m211/Bigamhuntr/IMG_2189.jpg
Now, thats a big pig ! Do you think that image is a photoshop work ? Think again.
Ok, what makes me think that ? Some of you no doubt are familiar with exif data, and some of you I'm sure are not. So let me explain that as quickly as possible. Exif data is info hidden inside a digital photograph. It can be easily accessed with many programs, but understanding it all is another thing entirely. All cameras (and photoshop) leave behind a digital trail in the data, and this can tell us a lot of things. One important thing to note is that exif data can be modified and faked. IF one has all the appropriate data relevant to a specific camera it can be done, but it would be tedious.
Now, I'm not going to give a ton of examples here as to the how and why, but I am MOSTLY satisfied that this particular image is direct unaltered JPG upload from a Canon A75. (And to other graphics people, no I'm not just looking at the camera name.. I'm quite qualified to interpret all exif data). But why do I say I'm only MOSTLY convinced ? Well, that's interesting. See, the exif data has a slight anomaly when compared to this next image, which was taken(according to the data), with the same model camera just under 3 minutes later. Same model, and a near number label would of course lead one to believe it's the same camera used.:
http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m211/Bigamhuntr/IMG_2196.jpg : Which would of course make sense. The problem ? I don't have a access to a canon A75 (actually if anyone is interested to play detective, and does have one, PM me) The aforementioned anomaly MIGHT lead me to believe that it was a different camera of the same model, or perhaps a different memory module, but could just as easily be an automatic setting variable. Everything else is consistent with being perfectly real and unaltered. I only mentioned the anomaly as a possible, though highly unlikely, sign of exif tampering.
Wow.. this is getting really long .. still with me people ? Anyway , in the first pic, I'll just keep it short and say I can find no evidence of digital manipulation. So, what I'm saying here folks, is if that first picture was altered, it is VERY GOOD WORK. Which is NOT consistent with the monsterpig.com photo . Moving on ...
To the monsterpig.com photo. The image in question, that most of you are referring to:
http://www.monsterpig.com/betterespigpic.jpg
You're correct, not real. It is both a forced perspective shot, and a digital manipulation. I can't use exif data as an example, because the data would have been altered to to include the site ad logo. You don't need to crunch the numbers though, the manipulation is so lax it easily seen. I've prepared a very rough image with some examples.
Well, be using the first image as a comparison here. They were shot at slightly different angles, but close enough.
Where I say "break in continuity, in all fairness this could be caused by simple bad resizing technique, go to small then back to larger from there and you've lost a lot of data and you'll get some blocky non-continuous things.. so even though it's there , lets ignore it. Why ? Because we dont need it. Compare the first pic I posted again to this one, and you'll notice there are dark hanging branches in the real pic that start on the left side of the center tree, and none on the fake. It's too prominent to be total resize loss. Oops monsterpig, I caught you .. but lets go on. Although it is partially a forced perspective (the kid is farther back then you are led to believe), also he HAS been altered to be smaller in the pic. To the uninitiated, what I refer to as "healing marks and errors" are an example of a sloppy job of reconstructing the area that would otherwise be left blank when you try to resize only part of an image. One has to repeat pixels from another part of the image, and then blend them in effectively. Obviously whoever made the image thought that a bad job of resizing would damage enough data to cover up the bad work.. but it didn't.
Well, I cant believe I bothered to get into all this, and type all this out. But hopefully this was informative to you.
-hexidismal