18 
Excluding cropping or tone adjustments, none of these images have been Photoshopped (as in composed from many images or morphed or painted over). They look like fakes but their authors say they are very real. I look at them and I can believe them.
Hmmmm. I mean. Kind of. What do you think?
Some of the photos are just well staged. Some others are good optical illusions. There are a couple that are supposed to be just (very) happy coincidences, like the golf ball above. Or is it?
But I’ve to admit that some are hard to believe. [Unreality Mag]
Intentional fall about to happen (painful) or man pasted on top with fake shadow (no hip broken)?
Car painted over in real life (expensive and complicated) or painted later in Photoshop (so easy and cheap)?
Staged in the sea while they waited for a wave and the surfer to be in the right position (patience!) or two photos merged in one (effortless)?
Staged in a stadium (lots of hard coordination here) or composed and sightly morphed later in Photoshop (lots easier?
Happy coincidence to get this surreal reflection (magic!) or some amateurish layer work (not very believable)?
A woman posing over a real miniature model of street (building that is hard) or pasted on a tilt-shifted city landscape (masking and composing is so easy)?
Do you have more examples of real photos that totally look like fakes (or the contrary)? Post them in the comments.
I call bullshit on most of those..
All photoshopped
Saw the car one on the news from other angles. Definatly painted!
The Car one was actually the only real looking one.
The one of the car is real. It was a student at UCLAN studying fine art, she had to car brought by a scrap man which cost her £100 and she then painted it carefully. See here for a video showing it’s real: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/8030766.stm
Not so sure about the others!
The car was done as an art project at UCLan in Preston.
Hm, the car one I remember as being in the news…it was an art project and there’s pictures from other angles.
Some of the others I can just about believe as being well constructed (although the golf ball one seems really dubious), so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment!
The surf pic’s apparently from Dustin Humphrey’s ‘Dopamine’ installation:
http://blog.photoshelter.com/2008/07/riding-a-wave-with-insights-dopamine/
And the 50-foot woman from Julia Fullerton-Batten’s ‘Teenage Stories’ series
http://www.juliafullerton-batten.com/
Shot in model villages…
Thanks for the links but, dude, the first link is full of naked women and the second a fat naked kid. Not ideal for viewing at work!
The Painted car is real, it was done at UCLAN in Preston, i printed the girls dissertation and Display Boards for her final exam. I saw the car after it had been moved she even textured it to feel like tarmac
“Staged in a stadium (lots of hard coordination here) or composed and sightly morphed later in Photoshop (lots easier?)”
Or… composed and painted by a man on canvas with paint because it is a painting? (lots difficulter?)
The 50ft woman (last pic) I reckon is fake. Look at the shadows of the people/lamp-posts vs. the shadow of the building… don’t even match. At least get the shadows right!
I am conflicted on that one, its obviously a model, with a lady in it, so totally believable from that point, but the main light source is coming from the left, and the photographers lighting equipment coming from other angles
the bit that throws it out is such a dark shadow on the house, when there is obviously other light sources.
the golf shot is completely fake, you can totally tell by the blur effect, and trees through the edges, also the dude falling is blatantly photoshopped as the shadow is nothing like it should be.
The stadium shot looks blatantly edited too as the jpeg artifacts and noise are totally different on the bg and the foreground (not to mention colouring and lighting). The others look real to me though, the reflection one is a bit crazy though so no idea on that one, if it was photoshopped you would think it would be cleaned up more.
The golf one is not photoshopped – but it is fake! The ball’s on a string:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/konderminator/1352838736/