
Samsung used my DSLR photo to fake their phone’s “portrait mode” - minikites
https://www.diyphotography.net/samsung-used-my-dslr-photo-to-fake-their-phones-portrait-mode/
======
amatecha
Ah man, I immediately thought of another recent case of a smartphone
manufacturer faking their phone's camera shots[0] (turns out TFA links to it
as well). Just a single instance of this kind of fraud is enough for me to
write off a brand forever, frankly. If you're lying to my face before I even
bought your product, who knows how much else you're lying about. Zero trust
for companies like this.

[0] [https://www.diyphotography.net/huawei-passes-off-dslr-
photos...](https://www.diyphotography.net/huawei-passes-off-dslr-photos-as-
smartphone-camera-photos-again/)

~~~
folkhack
Yep - zero trust is exactly right... I bought a Samsung smart watch for Black
Friday for $280-ish. Figured "hey - this will probably have better
calendar/application support than my Garmin watch!"

Nope. Literally can't get it to vibrate/alert when a notification comes
through unless it's through Samsung's SPECIFIC applications. So my HipChat
messages, Gmail inbox, etc have ZERO notifications even though it WILL show as
a new notification on the watch face. Before anyone gives me crap saying "you
screwed up the settings" \- trust me, I didn't, and I've tried everything.

I learned my lesson - Samsung is a faceless company with zero attention to
user experience, and customer support. It is of no surprise that they outright
lie about their features - which is EXACTLY what using a DSLR stock photo for
this marketing is. An outright lie.

I will stick with my Garmin devices from here on-out and am looking to switch
ecosystems for my phone as I'm on an S8+ that disgusts me as a user (Bixby,
bloatware blah blah).

ZERO trust for Samsung.

~~~
cgriswald
Samsung is completely untrustworthy. I _might_ buy another television from
them in the future as the screen quality on my Samsung televisions has always
been great. But their smart appliances are a joke. Read the reviews for any of
the required Samsung "Smart" Apps and you'll find terrible software that
doesn't work. Where it does work, at _best_ it technically meets the
advertised criteria, but in other cases it seems like bald-faced lies.

I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine. But the advertised smart
features don't work without the app, the App basically doesn't work, and while
they say they can be connected to the Wi-Fi, they can _only_ be connected to
Wi-Fi via WPS. If that was ever justified, it certainly wasn't justified in
2015/2016 when I bought them. Had I bought them for these features I'd have
been furious.

~~~
covercash
I keep hoping someone will kickstart a display company that sells just really
amazing displays and none of the “smart” garbage. I read that some
manufacturers even serve up ads in their latest smart UIs. That’s infuriating!

~~~
noxToken
IF you like a smart TV but not the smart features (but have no dumb
alternative), then don't connect it to the Internet. Now it's just a dumb TV.

~~~
Spare_account
I guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price but
it would be nice not to have to pay for a bunch of features I don't need.

No TV tuner, no WiFi, no ethernet, no loudspeakers. Just a great quality
display with a few HDMIs please.

~~~
rangibaby
I think that’s called a computer monitor

~~~
dylan604
I know why you're getting down voted, but you're not exactly wrong. There used
to be TVs and video monitors, and then there were computer monitors. They were
all CRTs. The computer monitors were way more expensive than TVs partly due to
being progressive scan vs interlaced. Televisions had low resolution and
included things like speakers and tuners. Video monitors could be had with
much higher resolution for post/broadcast facilities even though they were
still interlaced.

It wasn't until everything went flat screen where "TVs", computer monitors,
video monitors became so interchangeable. However, there's really not many 72"
computer monitors to fill up the space in my living room.

~~~
kbutler
For a while, computer monitors were limited by the HDTV specs, but a computer
monitor usually has better specs - often resolution, refresh rate, display
lag, connectivity options, etc.

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spuz
There is a small disclaimer on Samsung's site:

> The contents within the screen and images are simulated for illustrative
> purposes only.

I don't really have a problem with Samsung using a higher res DSLR photo for
the purposes of illustration of their background blur technology. I will
always check review sites to get real sample images to evaluate a phone's
camera technology.

Edit: I assume this was downvoted because it comes across as cynical but that
isn't what I meant to express at all. I don't expect companies to lie to me
and I don't trust companies so little that I assume they would lie to me. I
view this as more of an example of a company's marketing showing their product
in the best possible light. It's clear most companies will want to do that so
I prefer to go to review sights to get a better overview of the both the good
and the bad before making a purchase decision.

~~~
reaperducer
_I view this as more of an example of a company 's marketing showing their
product in the best possible light._

But it doesn't show their product in the best possible light. It shows some
DSLR company's product in the best possible light.

It's like a magazine ad for a Kia, and inside the car photo the dashboard has
been replaced with a Tesla's.

~~~
conradev
Or a commercial for McDonald’s, except instead of using real food, they use
fake stuff that looks better.

~~~
reaperducer
It's surprising how much of McDonald's advertising is regional, by the
franchise holders, and not from corporate.

In some markets, ads for the breakfast sandwiches are deliberately made to
look "messy" with splattered egg and crumbs from the muffin all around so that
they look more rustic and authentic.

~~~
ghostly_s
Source? I would be highly surprised if franchisees are allowed to produce
_any_ marketing assets independently. The brand is the most valuable asset McD
Corporate has. It's much more likely they have a catalog of assets/campaigns
that franchisees can choose from depending on their market. (Similarly to how
they allow franchisees a certain amount of leeway in what menu items they
feature, but they can't just make up their own sandwiches.)

------
dawnerd
Samsung just isn’t a company you can trust. Period. The only consumer product
they make that’s even half decent are their SSDs and even those are starting
to lose to competitors.

Their TVs alone have had so many instances of them injecting ads into the ui,
to spying on what you watch in plex, and many more.

Last thing I’d want from Samsung is a phone.

~~~
namibj
Can you recommend any other SSDs, or some site that has meaningful tail
latency/MTBF data? I don't like sticking to them for SSDs, but I have yet to
hear of one breaking, compared to a bunch of other name brands.

~~~
kup0
Indeed, I have an old 64GB 830 that is still working as if it's brand new.

So far I've had good experience with Crucial MX series, PNY CS11xx series of
drives (YMMV widely depending on series, etc) and Sandisk, all have lasted
through quite some use, but honestly I still prefer Samsung or Intel. I've
been using the Crucial drive for long enough now that I'd probably make them a
top choice too. Samsung, Intel, Crucial would be my top 3.

I've been running a Western Digital nvme for a couple of weeks now and it's
great- but that says nothing about longevity. The speed of nvme is incredible
though, so I really hope this drive lasts.

------
ljp_206
These sorts of 'illustrative only' graphics get pumped out every day in
marketing design, even for large brand names. As a young junior designer, I
once had a creative director ask me to use a Samsung phone asset to illustrate
how 'Bixby Vision' or whatever it was called worked. He wanted an Asian
language text in the background on a menu with the phone in the front, showing
translated text. I attempted to comply with his request for a little while
before pushing back gently; I was a greenhorn in the industry and didn't have
a great relationship with the CD anyway.

Thankfully nothing came of it and we moved forward with another concept. But I
was appalled at the time that he would have wanted me to grab seemingly
anything off of Google Translate and create a graphic representing how the
phone would supposedly work, all of which I was extremely uncomfortable doing.
But I suppose he saw it as an extension of our other usage of stock imagery
and device assets.

------
tasssko
Samsung as a household brand is a disaster. I was relieved to scrap my 4 year
old washing machine with 5 year warranty because of a Samsung guarantee fiasco
(what do you do when they don’t respond for a few days and you have a
household to run?). My 4in1 Samsung Lazer jet is also a disaster the WiFi
drops off and never reconnects you have cut power reset. So this doesn’t
surprise me at all.

------
lostlogin
The crazy thing is, their phones take amazing photos. Why do they need to fake
it?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
They all fake it. Even those few that _are_ taken with a phone are so far
removed from what a phone owner has, I think it would be more honest to label
them with a huge "FAKED photo" banner.

Here's an example for iPhone where they're using some complex mounting frame
to connect a 35mm prime lens to the front of an iPhone. The phone becomes more
like a smart camera back. [https://petapixel.com/2017/06/30/truth-shot-iphone-
style-ads...](https://petapixel.com/2017/06/30/truth-shot-iphone-style-ads/)

I call it fraudulent, and should be in breach of advertising regulations.

~~~
dwighttk
a) your article shows that there is a disclaimer on the ads about external
equipment and shows a picture that it is possible to mount crazy lenses on a
phone, but you are left to connect the dots yourself.

b) there is a categorical difference between using a different camera and
presenting it as if it came from the phone and using external equipment to
supplement the phone.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
a) According to another comment there's a disclaimer there too: "The contents
within the screen and images are simulated for illustrative purposes only".
Most will never see it as those disclaimers are always buried as far as they
think able to get away with. usually small point font, grey on grey, and on
screen for too little time to read if it's a video.

b) Not really. Whether "Shot with iPhone", or DSLR pics cropped to the phone
screen, they both imply to Ms Average that they could take their phone out of
their purse and achieve the same results. Otherwise why bother with campaigns
like that? Unless Ms Average has a bunch of slave flashes and lenses in there
too it cynically misrepresents. A simple tripod or monopod mount would be OK,
as that still fairly represents "what's in the box".

Like the GP noted, phone cameras are surprisingly good within their well known
limitations. They could achieve perfectly good, but honest, advertising photos
just by staying within those limits. They would just never achieve the results
an SLR with large, fast prime lens, and large sensor, or even arrays of
additional equipment plus phone could.

A vague disclaimer does not, and should not, replace honesty and presenting
what's "in the box".

------
IAmGraydon
Who cares? They disclose the fact that the photo wasn’t taken with the phone
right on the page. It’s for illustrative purposes, not to show the exact
quality of the phone’s functions. The author of this blog also just outed a
paying client. If they paid, they can use it however they like (within the
terms of the licensing agreement). This is a great way for the author to
ensure they never sell another photo to a large company.

~~~
acdha
They hide the note in very small text a long way down the page – way past all
of the big, attention grabbing pictures, knowing that most people aren’t going
to read down that far and consciously discount everything they saw.

Do you have a citation for the assertion that this was a paying client? She
clearly says the opposite in the post.

~~~
IAmGraydon
She put the photo up for sale on a stock photo site and Samsung apparently
bought it and used it. Where are you seeing her state otherwise?

~~~
acdha
The article says nothing about being paid but does say this at the end:

“Since I’d made my first sale on EyeEm and saw the image on Samsung Malaysia’s
website right after that, I didn’t even assume that they’d stolen the image. I
mean, why would they? It’s not expensive for a huge company like that to buy
one stock photo. Although, to be honest, I think that they should have paid
more for a better retoucher. But just to make sure, I got in touch with EyeEm,
asking whether Samsung bought the image from them.

A wonderful lady from customer support told me that the sale wasn’t registered
on EyeEm yet. However, she explained that sometimes buyers have subscriptions
with Getty Images, meaning that they will be billed later for their photos.
“Photos can be used months before we get sales data for the photo,” she added,
and promised to keep me updated.

After this, I contacted Getty to check whether the sale was made through their
website. I never got a reply.”

~~~
spuz
Your quotes from the article don't support your original claim that she
claimed that Samsung did not pay her for her photo. Just the opposite. I think
you are reading the text incorrectly. To paraphrase what I think she is
saying: "My photo was bought on EyeEm via Getty Images. I don't know who
bought my photo from Getty Images but it was probably Samsung".

~~~
acdha
That’s why I was asking whether there was a subsequent confirmation. It’s
definitely possible that they bought it but it’s easy to find photographers
who’ve been ripped off by companies which are big enough to know better and
given that the main story is an ethical lapse, a second one is hard to rule
out.

------
microcolonel
Wow, I must say I am surprised that something this seemingly-fraudulent
managed to make it to the public website. I'm interested to see what Samsung
has to say about this, hard to give them the benefit of the doubt, even if
it's possible it's just a "marketer went too far" or "The images went from the
mockup to the live site before engineering sent the samples".

If this feature works even remotely as advertised, they could have gotten at
least a couple shots (and saved the intermediate images, I guess, to do the
before/after).

------
tooltalk
For a company with $10+B annual marketing budget, the company awfully is
careless about little things that could destroy their reputation.

------
kawsper
I think EyeEm and Getty should work on their integrations, it can't be right
that an can't know for sure who licensed their work.

I could see cases where the artist might be wondering if their picture is
legitimately being used by someone, or if they should get legal advice.

------
hiven
Never buy Samsung

------
torgian
This isn’t really new. Samsung bought (allegedly) his stock photo and used it.
Nothing illegal with that, though it potentially could be false advertising.

I feel like all phone companies use dslr photos, or photos they didn’t even
take with the phone, to advertise how great their cameras are.

Sad state of the world we are in. Everyone lies

------
ttty
Well iPhone ads use DSLR lens in front of the iPhone. A bit closer to reality,
but net effects are the same, fake advertising.

This is not to excuse Samsung, it's just to remember that most of the
companies does that and all should be mentioned, not just one.

~~~
pembrook
Not sure what you’re talking about.

If you go on the iPhone pages of the Apple website you can clearly see the
same artifacting, noise patterns, and lens distortion from both the native
iPhone sensor and native wide angle and portrait lenses.

I am 100% positive they did not use lens attachments in those photos. Also,
the lens adapters don’t make the photo quality “better.” They just have the
ability to modify the focal length.

------
wodenokoto
Even Nokia was caught faking their image stabilizer. In the video allegedly
filmed with one of the phones, you could see a big professional camera rig in
the reflection of a car window ...

------
ezoe
Seriously, How did they not think about busting. Like... they didn't know that
there is a Google search?

------
mehrdadn
Isn't false advertising illegal in the US? How do they get away with this?

~~~
slantyyz
As far as I can tell, the doctored image is used only on images for a handful
of Asian countries - Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and
Malaysia. I don't think US laws would apply in those places.

~~~
mehrdadn
Ahh I got the impression it was in the US, thanks!

------
foobaw
This definitely requires someone that was lazy independently doing this. This
definitely does not reflect a common practice that Samsung does. Someone high
up will be heavily punished for this.

------
btgis
It doesn't look to me like they're pretending they took the picture with that
phone. They are just using that photo as an example to show how the
"background blur" feature works.

~~~
acdha
Samsung pays for PR, why contribute your reputation pro bono?

Everything on that section is talking about the phone. There are no
disclaimers or the “simulation” notes ethical companies use.

~~~
FireBeyond
> There are no disclaimers or the “simulation” notes ethical companies use.

Well, other than:

> * All images are simulated for demo purpose.

you mean...

~~~
acdha
I mean nothing anywhere near the images. An ethical company would not require
you to scroll down a dozen more times to learn that the images you’d been
looking at for the last 20 screens were all fake. Samsung does that because
they know almost nobody will read tiny text buried in a de-emphasized
paragraph and the few who do probably won’t fully discount the full
impression.

------
earth2mars
Shamesung

~~~
k_sze
Also: Shamsung

------
stunt
Marketing and HR are probably the worst departments in most of the businesses.

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sschueller
Kind of lazy for Samsung to do that when their phones and others manufactures
actually can take some astonishing pictures. But even Apple "cheats" a bit
with their photos which are shot on an actual iPhone. [1]

[1]
[https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphone-80...](https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphone-800x465.jpg)

~~~
bscphil
That's not an iPhone in the picture, is it?

~~~
colejohnson66
If it is, it’s not the stock camera app

------
21
Does anybody buy a phone/car/... based on manufacturer ads? In a sense this is
a self-selecting scam. If you don't check 3rd party reviews, then well, you
get "advertised" _

~~~
adetrest
> Does anybody buy a phone/car/... based on manufacturer ads? In a sense this
> is a self-selecting scam. If you don't check 3rd party reviews, then well,
> you get "advertised"

Yes, and that's exactly why ads are regulated (there are limits to what you
claim your product can do), and why there is so much money in ads: they're
designed to influence you and make you buy things that you might not
otherwise.

