Bing's picture of the day is Pittsburgh (with no corporate signs?) (Washington: shop, move)

[ferraris]

The picture of the day on bing is of Downtown Pittsburgh (well you might have to cycle through with the arrows to get to it). Curiously they seem to have used a picture which was altered to remove all of the corporate signs from the skyscrapers. At first I thought it was just an old picture and the USX tower still had no sign, but the Highmark building is also noticeably missing its sign.

For those who aren't familiar with bing, if you hover your mouse on different areas of the picture, it will give little tidbits of information.

[Aqua Teen Carl]

The skyline looks so much better when those logos are photoshopped out. Now when you look at the city from Mt. Washington it looks like we have a case of corporate herpes.

[SammyKhalifa]

That moon's pretty dang photoshopped, too.

[Blackbeauty212]

But the current convention center is missing, that far left side of Downtown looks empty without it

[Impala26]

Especially in light of Blackbeauty's observation, could it just be a photo taken in the mid to late 90's?

[Caladium]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

The skyline looks so much better when those logos are photoshopped out. Now when you look at the city from Mt. Washington it looks like we have a case of corporate herpes.

LOL corporate herpes. I'm going to have to use that if I can find a way to work it into a conversation. I agree, I'm not a big fan of lots and lots of corporate logos (although a few can look cool).

[Craziaskowboi]

Yep, that's an old picture.

[UKyank]

The former Hilton sign area looks scrubbed

[Jrn14]

At first I thought I didn't like the signs, but I kind of realized when the mellon sign was gone, that the buildings look better if they have a lighted roof top (see the Koppers building) or a sign (see The Steel Building). When the mellon building was signless it just looked so dark and dreary... So I realized then that I actually do like the signs especially on the unlighted buildings.

[greg42]

It's an old picture, for sure. It's not just airbrushed out. You can see the old Hilton sign for example. (Just a couple years ago, before the debacle, they put a new Hilton logo sign up there instead of the old letters that were there for 40-50 years.) Plus, the fountain is on, etc. And hard to tell because it's not that tall and it's dark, but I think you'll find the 3 PNC building is not there. It's probably just a nearly 10-year-old photo, before the signs started cropping up. One of the earliest signs (apart from the Hilton, which was there for ages) was FreeMarkets on what is now the K&L Gates Center, and even that does not show up.

If you go digging a bit for other photos you can see that the signs often don't show clearly anyway. It would have to be a pretty high quality pic. They would show as serious smudges of light at least, though, so it would be rather difficult to go round and remove them from this shot.

BTW, Fifth Avenue Place dammit. There is no such thing as the Highmark building.....