Here is a puzzle for you to ponder if you want.
These two stock images are very much alike. The first link is my image. The second link is an image that popped up in a tineye search using my image as a source.
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mhtAAri/Track
http://en.fotolia.com/id/15052484
I have placed both images on separate layers in Photoshop and then adjusted the image details to match each other. This adjustment was only a straight scaling, no warping or other tricks.
The fotolia image is an exact match with the exception of certain details in the image such as the addition of more white triangles and the additional running lane on the left side of the image. As near as I can tell even the surface texture of the running surface matches up exactly between the two images.
My questions are...
What art the chances that two images could be taken with the exact same subject framing, colors, angle of view etc...
Assuming the fotolia image is an original image, I have never seen a running track with a lane to the left of the "number 1" track. I have seen wider margins on the running surface next to the "number 1" lane but these are never painted or sized to look like an actual running lane.
I'm looking for opinions on this and if the fotolia image is indeed an altered copy of my image how would I go about proving this to fotila.
Looking at the rest of this person's fotolia gallery it seems that many of the images there are altered photographs. If this person is not above modifying one person's image and then selling it they would likely have more altered images for sale.
http://en.fotolia.com/p/200499883
"What [are] the chances that two images could be taken with the exact same subject framing, colors, angle of view etc..."
euh... not very likely. I mean, you probably have looked into this much closer than I have, but I think even the grass looks the same when I zoom in on Fotolia and I do mean the same place where the grass growsout onto the track border.
Even if they took a photograph at the exact same point like 5 minutes after you did I don't think it would match up just as well.
I would assume this to be a copy.
I saw my typo after posting and discovered that you can not edit the first post.
:/
Amazing coincidence... :-)
I believe you have good reason to be pissed off by the Piste Athlétisme image, Dave. The bloke should be done for Photoshoplifting...
Stolen. Complain loudly and ask them to overlay the images if they don't believe you. I wish we could all afford legal action. And once more, Fotolia will profit from the sales while the owner of the image gets zilch. Dishonest site which encourages theft.
I'd love to see the meta tags if they survived the editing. So I presume that there are tracks 0 and -1 then !
I didn't see a date on fotolia, but I think the thumbnail has been on that site since atleast Jun 2009.
There is a program called Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder that I have and it tells the the percentage difference between images that it finds are similar to the target image. Would be useful for this instance if we had full scale images to work with.
http://www.mindgems.com/products/VS-Duplicate-Image-Finder/VSDIF-About.htm
Still there with 29 DLs so far.
I think we all know its the same image.
Good Hunting...
Dave, have you contacted them?