It seems like Samsung have not been portraying themselves as an honest company with the recent mistakes that were discovered by the online community. Just a few days back Samsung’s Nigerian account was found to be using an iPhone to promote their Samsung Galaxy Note 9, and now Samsung is exposed for using DSLR photo to promote Galaxy A8 Star’s camera capabilities.
This is the second time Samsung used stock images to showcase their smartphone’s camera capabilities, in which the first time was when the company used stock images to promote their Galaxy A8’s rear camera’s capabilities and this time it’s reoccurring with Galaxy A8 Star, promoting the smartphone’s front camera.
Image credit: DIY Photography
The one who exposed Samsung is none other than the subject of the photo, Dunja Djudjic, who took the picture with a DSLR. The image is then used by Samsung to promote the A8 Star’s portrait mode to show the background blur effect. Djudjic found out because she created a profile on EyeEm, a global photography community and marketplace that partnered with Getty hence some of her photos were chosen to be sold through Getty’s collection. When her photo was sold, she was notified and out of curiosity, she did a reverse image search which led her to the Samsung exposure.
Djudjic stated that Samsung edited her face and hair, and also cut her out of the original background and replaced it with a park photo. As Samsung wanted to showcase the portrait mode, they had to replace the background to show the before and after effect of background blur, because the owner took the original photo at f/2.0 aperture which means her background was originally blur and cannot be used without edits from Samsung.
Djudjic believes that Samsung didn’t steal the image and bought it from Getty, but she could not contact Samsung or Getty to get an accurate reply. Instead, all she got from Samsung were messages that teaches her how to use Samsung smartphones. What’s disappointing is that Samsung is implying that the photo taken with DSLR is taken with the A8 Star, and though this is not uncommon among smartphone brands, it is indeed a deceitful act and definitely false advertising.
Either way, this manipulation by Samsung only proves that it’s much harder to be trust smartphone brands that promotes the capabilities of their smartphone’s cameras, because they could just be manipulating users by using DSLR photos and Photoshop edits.
