FEW could believe it when the first fuzzy alleged photo of pop stars Edison Chen and Gillian Chung in bed surfaced on the Net last Sunday.

What was a girl like Chung, from the squeaky-clean group Twins, doing in such an X-rated picture? Why would she have posed with a breast peeking out from her bikini and her legs spread apart? Did she even ever date Chen?

Her company, Emperor Entertainment, declared in a statement last Monday that the picture was a digital composite – a fake, in other words.

They said the photo and another allegedly of Chen and his reported ex-girlfriend Bobo Chan – which showed up on Monday – were digital fakes.

But the serial prankster (or pranksters) struck over and over again last week, posting more and more explicit alleged pictures of Chen and Chung, and also of actress Cecilia Cheung.

And more and more newspapers have changed their tune. Apple Daily, for instance, no longer says the photos are composites.

Last Wednesday, the police arrested an unemployed man in connection with the circulation of the obscene pictures. But they have not found out if the photos are fakes, reports Apple Daily.

Photography experts don’t think they were doctored.

“They’re 100 per cent real,” said The Straits Times’ senior executive photographer Alan Lim. “The perspective, dots per inch, grain, lighting, shadow and skin tone are all constant,” he added.

Hong Kong’s renowned photography lecturer Joseph Fung, who was shown the pictures of Chen and Chung, also told Ming Pao that the images did not seem modified.

On the Net, surfers have discussed up a storm.

Some note, for example, that Cheung has the same tattoos as the woman in the X-rated pictures.

Others, like fans of Chung, insist that a depraved prankster pasted her head on someone else’s body.

So are the images genuine or not? You be the judge.