Hey friends. I’m going to teach you a very valuable lesson today.  A lesson that will help you move forward in life with more confidence and happiness for years to come.  A lesson that will protect you from falling victim to something that we all have fallen for before. What is this glorious piece of information I have to share with you?

Photoshop exists.

Further more, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

And finally, people can REALLY easily manipulate photos.  It may look impossible to you, but to a seasoned photoshop user, it is child’s play.

The reason why I bring this up is because every so often, an innocent little picture will start floating around pintrest, someone will stupidly make some made up caption either because they are extremely naive or ignorant, or they are an evil genius and just like that, the entire world thinks you can actually inject lemons with food coloring for a result of perfectly colored fruit.

The truth is, this would be a very simple photoshop job.  And also, I believe these are oranges, not lemons.  And following the link from this pin, you end up at either a stock image site, or a google search result.  The destination doesn’t even have instructions, or explanations for the injecting process.  Which means, every human who repinned this most likely never actually followed the pin to the original site, which means they would probably believe anything I put on pintrest… Think of all the evil tricks I could play…

I tried this awesome thing the other day! I put some of Jeff’s mustache trimmings and a lemon into a mason jar of vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, sparkles, three drops of mountain dew and a glow stick, and OMG, the next day the lemon looked like THIS:

AMAZING!!!  Now everyone try it!

See how easy that was?  This even happened to one of my OWN photoshopped pictures:

I pinned this, even indicating its photoshopped nature, and one pin later, someone made up a suggestion of tying balloons to your babies and launching them into the air!  I don’t feel like tying a bunch of loose strings to a baby and then throwing them is the safest idea.  In fact, I don’t think throwing your at all baby is a safe idea either (Jonny is a professional here, but that height still gives me the heebie jeebies!).  Though, I am flattered that they thought the balloons were real 🙂

The most recent case I have seen floating around facebook and pintrest is this lovely picture, called the miraculous Moon Melon from Japan.

The pin states: “This a Moonmelon, scientifically knows as asidus. This fruit grows in some parts of Japan, and is known for its vibrant blue color. What you probably don’t know about this fruit is that it can switch flavors after you eat it. Everything sour will taste sweet, everything salty will taste bitter, and it gives water a strong orange-like taste. It’s also very expensive…costing about ￥16000 JPY (which is about 200 dollars)”

Sounds awesome, right!?  Perhaps a little too awesome?  Because it is. Do a quick google search, and you will easily find many sources explaining the hoax, and even the original picture! See?

So now you can see how simple it is to change a color on photoshop (and between you and me, the person did a pretty crappy job at photoshopping the blue melon, especially obvious where the top of the melon cuts into the background. You can see the paint line overlapping the green husk).  It was so easy, I made several more colors in a matter of a few minutes.

So there you have it, my friends. Hopefully you have learned something today, and will be better prepared to face the internet world filled with hoaxes and nasty tricks!

By the way, do you like my new hair color?