The CROPPED tennis ball photo is a 'fake' in the sense that it has been photo-edited quite heavily (and IMO, quite poorly) prior to publication.
It is possible to put both the cropped photo and the uncropped photo into any half decent photo editing software to have a look at the light spectrum of each. I happen to use GIMP.
For the cropped photo, the light spectrum is concentrated very much at the bright end. For the uncropped photo, it is all below mid-level.
The original is actually quite poor. Whoever took it should have zoomed in a lot more on Madeleine and dropped a lot of the court. That means the camera was trying to balance on the green of the court, and Madeleine's colours have suffered as a result.
I am not certain, but it looks like the original was first cropped, then the brightness and contrast adjusted. It would probably have worked better the other way i.e. adjusting the uncropped image with the original blend of colours, then cropping. There now seems to be several Photoshopped variants of the cropped variant in circulation. I don't think it is wise to add another fake photo, so I'll give that experiment a miss.
For those who like the details, I've got the 2 photos and their associated light spectrums ready to go. I'll stick those up on my blog later today, and those interested can see for themselves.
The bottom line is neither is very good. The uncropped one has poor colour balance and brightness, and the cropped one is worse.
Basically, one cannot rely on the cropped one as an accurate depiction (colours, brightness etc.). At the very least, comparison with The Last Photo would require a better job on the uncropped one. The cropped tennis balls photo has no redeeming feature from a technical viewpoint.
