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This is why I don't buy online

Matthew Meyer

Matthew Meyer

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Not happy about driving out to Aqua Plus for this. I have seen other Hologram Hammers under whites. Would not show me the coral under blues. Pretty bad experience for a customer willing to pay $100 a head cash.No comparison. Waste of my time driving out here. This type of advertising should be criminal. I dont care if its not colored up or not. Post an actual photo too. NOT HAPPY

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Sucks to see a LFS doing this. What were the 17 comments about? I’m sure someone must’ve called him out for the heavily photoshopped picture. Usually if the price is too good to be true then it is. Holograms were selling for $250 per head at CFM.
 
SupraSaltyReefer said:
Sucks to see a LFS doing this. What were the 17 comments about? I’m sure someone must’ve called him out for the heavily photoshopped picture. Usually if the price is too good to be true then it is. Holograms were selling for $250 per head at CFM.
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Exactly coral exotic is the gold standard.. I know what they look like. This is just a bunch of b s
 
IMO I find blue backgrounds in coral pictures to be an indication of false coloration. If they were using a lense to show true coloration then the egg crate should be white (ish).
I could be totally wrong, but that’s been an indicator for me. This one you showed isn’t terrible, but some I’ve seen are crazy.

Most disappointing for me has been the size of what I receive vs what it looks like in the pictures. Thinking that you’re getting a nice fluffy Acan Lord and receiving a puny little polyp is a big bummer.

Stick to LFS’s and local growers that you can check out in person first.
 
Invictus said:
IMO I find blue backgrounds in coral pictures to be an indication of false coloration. If they were using a lense to show true coloration then the egg crate should be white (ish).
I could be totally wrong, but that’s been an indicator for me. This one you showed isn’t terrible, but some I’ve seen are crazy.

Most disappointing for me has been the size of what I receive vs what it looks like in the pictures. Thinking that you’re getting a nice fluffy Acan Lord and receiving a puny little polyp is a big bummer.

Stick to LFS’s and local growers that you can check out in person first.
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When blues or purples totally blow out the background or change the eggcrate drastically I feel that it is purposely deceptive. Especially if you go to the shop and will not turn on the blues for comparison. I feel that if some of these sellers could get away with photoshop, they would 100% photoshop all there pictures or just post from their exporters for plausible deniability. If it wasn't for BAR I probably would be totally done with the community. Coral Exotic and High Tide Aquatics have been such a light in the darkness, it keeps me coming around. Probably the only two people I would buy from without actually seeing the coral in person.
 
Matthew Meyer said:
Not happy about driving out to Aqua Plus for this. I have seen other Hologram Hammers under whites. Would not show me the coral under blues. Pretty bad experience for a customer willing to pay $100 a head cash.No comparison. Waste of my time driving out here. This type of advertising should be criminal. I dont care if its not colored up or not. Post an actual photo too. NOT HAPPY

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Where did you have to drive to?
 
If anyone has examples of photoshopped pictures, please post them here. Even just links to pages. I've been thinking about building an automated detector of this for photos, and if we can get an index of images that are high confidence edits, and ones that aren't, it'd be a lot easier to build.

For people that aren't familiar, the hardest part of building AIs is getting clean data that is categorized (labeled) properly. The larger the variety of examples you can put together, the easier it is to hand to a computer and say "here's examples, learn how to assess the next one".
 
I do think it’s super scummy to photoshop anything or misrepresent your product. I don’t really buy any coral online anymore partly for this reason (but mostly to support the LFS we have).

But like - I’m surprised anyone would drive anywhere based on that photo? It’s painfully obvious, no?
 
SepToob said:
I do think it’s super scummy to photoshop anything or misrepresent your product. I don’t really buy any coral online anymore partly for this reason (but mostly to support the LFS we have).

But like - I’m surprised anyone would drive anywhere based on that photo? It’s painfully obvious, no?
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I thought Tam Vo was a pretty trusted person in the community. There was a lot of interest on his post. I feel like misrepresentation of a coral on a "locals" page would be terrible idea. But hey. I did drive out there

Kensington Reefer said:
Where did you have to drive to?
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Its close to Levi Stadium
 
richiev said:
If anyone has examples of photoshopped pictures, please post them here. Even just links to pages. I've been thinking about building an automated detector of this for photos, and if we can get an index of images that are high confidence edits, and ones that aren't, it'd be a lot easier to build.

For people that aren't familiar, the hardest part of building AIs is getting clean data that is categorized (labeled) properly. The larger the variety of examples you can put together, the easier it is to hand to a computer and say "here's examples, learn how to assess the next one".
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I DM’d you some obvious examples from active online sales
 
Devil's advocate: that does look like a nice hologram hammer under your lighting from what I've seen in person at Cali Kid and online:


I tend to run whiter light too and have to temper my expectations from what I get at CFM and elsewhere. But like others said, the color of egg crate, skeleton, or epoxy on the plug should be your reference point as a consumer.
 
To be fair, the pic he posted looks like the wholesaler's photo with the item number, and not his own. Plus corals always look better from the top than from the side.
 
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had to swing to Tam today to clarify, i think you did talk to the staff who has no idea how to control the light setting ( Tam can do it but not Huy the staff). It looks pretty good in real time
 
CaseyP said:
To be fair, the pic he posted looks like the wholesaler's photo with the item number, and not his own. Plus corals always look better from the top than from the side.
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I think thats a cop-out for marketing.
Vu Le said:
View attachment 52823had to swing to Tam today to clarify, i think you did talk to the staff who has no idea how to control the light setting ( Tam can do it but not Huy the staff). It looks pretty good in real time
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Your picture under heavy blues still looks nothing like the posted picture......Not even close imo. I think advertising under blues and not being able to show them under blues is deceptive. This picture doesn't have any orange or saturation of the original. I wouldn't pay anything for these compared to people valuing these at $250/head. People would jump on this at $100 a head if it looked like the original.
 
Matthew Meyer said:
I think thats a cop-out for marketing.

Your picture under heavy blues still looks nothing like the posted picture......Not even close imo. I think advertising under blues and not being able to show them under blues is deceptive. This picture doesn't have any orange or saturation of the original. I wouldn't pay anything for these compared to people valuing these at $250/head. People would jump on this at $100 a head if it looked like the original.
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As someone with no skin in the game, that recent shot looks like a very good version of the picture Matthew took, and nothing like the original picture provided.
 
It's also possible that these photos aren't "photoshopped" per se. Some phones and cameras oversaturate pictures by default. Also Orange filters can help make photos more realistic by taking out some the blue overexposure, or they can be abused to make things unrealistically pop with only heavy blue lighting. I've just come to accept that if I buy a coral based on a dealer picture, it won't look like that in my tank because I don't run all blue lighting nor am I looking at corals from the top down most of the time. Not defending them either, I find it very annoying and disingenuous about representing their product.

From my tank. None of these have been altered by software and taken with the same camera. One is taken top down with only blue lighting and an orange filter, the other is from the side with more daylight setting.

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CaseyP said:
It's also possible that these photos aren't "photoshopped" per se. Some phones and cameras oversaturate pictures by default. Also Orange filters can help make photos more realistic by taking out some the blue overexposure, or they can be abused to make things unrealistically pop with only heavy blue lighting. I've just come to accept that if I buy a coral based on a dealer picture, it won't look like that in my tank because I don't run all blue lighting nor am I looking at corals from the top down most of the time. Not defending them either, I find it very annoying and disingenuous about representing their product.

From my tank. None of these have been altered by software and taken with the same camera. One is taken top down with only blue lighting and an orange filter, the other is from the side with more daylight setting.

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These are incredible pictures! I wish people who sold coral for a living could post photos like this!
 
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