Three things:

That's fine, you don't have to. Just as long as you acknowledge others can, which you did in your first sentence.

I took the original photo and the ostensibly iPad creation, and took the difference with scipy tools:

No, that's why you have different categories in art. Photo-realism is it's own category, and if you don't appreciate it that's your prerogative. That's fine, appreciate the categories that you want.

A photocopier is not an artist, even though it can duplicate art. If blind reproduction were art, then my monitor would be an artist whenever it presents an of a work of art. It's not because there is no consciousness guiding the act.

To the people who said they overlayed it and it's pixel-for-pixel exact:

We each have our preferences but I respectfully disagree with those who feel photorealistic artwork lacks creativity or isn't art. Art takes many forms and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I especially like photorealistic artwork....not computer-created so it appears exactly like a photograph but an oil…

Is it really that hard to just accept the fact that someone is THAT good at photorealism? Why the need to shit on someone or call them a phony? Being as I've been doing graphics work for many years, I'm well aware of what can be produced given the talent, tools and time. Hell, have you seen what people can do manually…

Best comment I've ever read.

THIS is art.

I was being facetious, but I get your point. It's entirely possible, though I, too, would like to see the artist in the flesh, tapping that screen. Chuck Close is a master at this, and his Brad Pitt tapestry is comparable to this, I think.

It's called photo(or hyper) realism. It's an extremely honed art and when you watch someone creating one you can really appreciate it. You could say it's pointless, but so is curling, but the whole world watches that shit for weeks every 4 years.

It's not illuminating to you - you invested 2 minutes watching it happen. For the guy painting it I'm sure he learned some valuable lessons about - lighting, color, texture, caustics, etc which can be applied to other paintings and styles.

That doesn't look at all like Morgan Freeman. This David Newman guy is terrible.

I know exactly how you feel, but the thing is, people's interests are piqued when they know more effort was involved. Show someone this image, and they'll say "looks nice". Tell them it's a painting or iPad art and they'll explode: "Whoa!! No way!"
True, it would be cool if the artist could make something impressive…

It seems like the end result isn't very creative, but the creative part of this art is more in the journey to get there than the final destination... (its all about the trip man...)

Happy little Morgan Freemans...

You can make a painting based off a picture, but good luck trying that with a camera.

Agreed. The other two are a little bit more "artsy," especially the one of Jude Law.

the Freeman is 378x better than the other examples shown here. even with the video I can't comprehend how this was done.