From the description it seems like this is an artificial projection onto a sphere, with added depth effect. Now to be clear, I don't want to say that this makes it "fake" - the input data is still real. The curvature of the planet and the depth is likely to be exaggerated compared to reality though (at least I'll assume it is until proven otherwise).
I assume that you mean a photo as-taken from the camera? No, it's modified. But not in a way that is intended to mislead, or should be labeled as "fake" in my opinion.
You can compare it to when you zoom in far enough on Google Maps to reveal the 3D map: most of those 3D models are based on 2D satellite images taken from multiple angles, combined with height information extracted from those angles through machine learning. So the original images are flat, but the 3D projection of them is still more-or-less representative of the real shapes in our world.
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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '20 edited Feb 12 '21
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