Comment: cut&pase job no, altered a lot - definitely (Score 1) 180
I see no reason to believe that the picture in question has been created by using several photos and copying/pasting people or heads around, but the lighting DEFINITELY looks "fake" (heavily edited) to me. Not only the light, also the colours. For example, the old guy (2nd from the left, holding the left child) - his head just looks unrealistically bright. Or the glasses guy two to the right of him. He definitely is in the shadow, yet his face is not dark at all. And the colours - on the hackerfactor page, compare the face of the guy holding the right child in the "fake" pic with his face in the picture just below that one. In the unedited pic, his face is a dark red/brown, completely unlike the world press photo picture.
So - completely faked? No. But definitely heavily edited, and then it's a question of whether they wanted heavily edited pictures in their competition, or instead want "unaltered" pictures. In other words, whether they want pictures which "wow" the observer because the photographer captured a special, noteworthy moment or because the photographer used Photoshop to make a picture TECHNICALLY "perfect".