Fun With Photoshop

Yes, it is available as wallpaper 🙂

Photoshop Redemption Card Deception

After reading this, I bet you’ll never want to purchase a redemption card over the internet again.  I have talked to you about people using Photoshop to “enhance” the appearence of their cards, but this time I would like to talk about how people use Photoshop to travel back in time with their redemption cards.  Lets say you pull out a redemption card like the one pictured below.

Then you decide to scratch off the redemption to see what autographed card you are due to receive.

You find out its an autograph of a rookie that you have never heard of.  You wish you could go back in time and never have scratched it off.  Well, with Photoshop some sellers have discovered time travel.  People will scan the scratched card into Photoshop and “correct” the scratched part using the image of another unscratched redemption card.  Below is a “fixed”  version of the scratched off card.  People will put them up for sale making the buyers think it is unsctached.  Therefore, the seller gets money for the unsctached card, and get the card from the company since they already redeemed it.

I know people will read this and say I’m promoting sellers to do this, but if I wouldn’t show collectors this they would not know about it.  I wrote this to help protect potential bidders from falling victim to a scam.  Online redemptions are good for collectors because you don’t have to mail them in, but if you purchase one over the internet you could get stuck in a mess like this.  The mail-in redemption cards that most companies are getting rid of could protect you from a scam.  There are pros and cons on each side of the situation.   

Sellers Using Photoshop To Manipulate Cards

There are a lot of low sellers trying to take advantage of people.  People have found a way to use Photoshop to make cards look better than they really are.  They scan a picture of a card and then they use Photoshop to slightly crop the card to make it appear that it has smooth edges and sharp corners.  This is usually done with vintage cards since they are the ones that most likely aren’t in the best condition.  Here is an example,  below is a picture of a vintage baseball card with round corners.

Here is that same card after cropping it a little. 

As you can see the second picture makes the card appear to be in better condition when it really isn’t.  When deciding to purchase a card whether in person or online it is better to buy a vintage card that is graded and/or certified.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.