Samsung, you may buy a photo but you cannot misinform people about it! Samsung has been alleged of misguiding its customers, yet again. The Korean smartphone giant has been accused of misguiding users by a false representation of a picture.
Samsung used a picture taken with DSLR to demonstrate the camera results of its latest Galaxy A8 Star phone!
The photographer Dunja Djudjic reported in a post on DIY Photography that Samsung is using her photos to demonstrate the Galaxy A8 Star’s portrait mode. The photographer further revealed that she noticed her picture was sold from the EyeEm photo community. Upon drilling down into details using the reverse image search, she found out that the image is being used by Samsung Malaysia, to present the results of Galaxy A8 Star.
The image used by Samsung was photoshopped making sure that the difference of before and after is obvious. They took a picture of the girl and pasted it up on another background. This was done to depict how an image before and after looks on the device. The photographer reported:
“Whoever created this image, they also cut me out of the original background and pasted me onto a random photo of a park. I mean, the original photo was taken at f/2.0. If I remember well, and they needed the “before” and “after” – a photo with a sharp background, and another one where the almighty “portrait mode” blurred it out. So Samsung’s Photoshop master resolved it by using a different background.”
Upon investigation, the photographer found out that her image sale wasn’t registered with EyeEm. Though, it might be a sale made through a subscription on Getty, who is partners with EyeEm. The customer support from EyeEm told Dunja that, “Photos can be used months before we get sales data for the photo.”
Dunja, after not getting a satisfactory response from EyeEm, checked things with Getty but never got a reply. She also tried to contact Samsung, but that was not possible until she had some issues with their device. The photographer, disappointed at the incident, wrote:
“I tried getting in touch with Samsung too, but it’s impossible to do it via its website. Unless you have a problem with some of the company’s devices. I sent a message to Samsung Global via Facebook, explaining my problem. All I got was a bunch of generic messages teaching me how to use Samsung smartphones. Thanks, Samsung, but I use Huawei. At least they do a better job faking smartphone images with photos shot on a DSLR.”
This is actually true. A lot of brands have been faking images to promote their products which is highly unethical. Even if they buy a picture, they don’t get the rights to misinform the users or create illusions over images just for the sake of promoting their products.
We don’t expect companies as big as Samsung being unethical like this. What do you think?
Amnah Fawad
Moazam Ijaz
