this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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As a frequent Photoshop user I have to agree with the other comment; the beard looks suspiciously like somebody used Smudge to push it out then Blur to hide the smear. It almost looks like the Eraser was used to put a bit of soft transparency on the new edge.
Edit: On further inspection I think they also used the Burn tool on his neck and upper lip to add more shadow.
Edit 2: Burn maybe also used on his hairline. In the upper left there is a curl in the original that has been filled in on the altered.
Frankly it looks like low color info/low res trash with way too much contrast, hence his hair being a solid black block basically.
Certainly they started with a low res image and what we are seeing might be very zoomed in. However I stand by what I said originally, this looks suspiciously like the result of a small set of Photoshop tools to me.
Meh I work with a lot of garbage footage and this just looks like shitty work. But agreed to disagree.