But when Pam received the finished product from the photographer, she found that all of her family’s faces had been bizarrely edited to look like cartoon characters.

“OK. This is NOT a joke. We paid a photographer, who claimed to be a professional, for a family photo shoot. Please see these FOR REAL photos she delivered to us,” Pam wrote on Facebook.

The photographer was paid between $US200 and $US250 (between $250 and $315) and insisted the strange editing was intentional.

“She said the shadows were really bad on the beautiful, clear, sunny day and that her professor never taught her to retouch photos,” Pam wrote.

“I literally have not laughed this hard in YEARS!!!!! You can’t make this stuff up.....again, this is NOT a joke.”

Pam’s post has been liked and shared hundreds of thousands of times, but some commenters were sceptical about whether someone could truly stuff up this badly.

She had to reassure hundreds of commenters that the photos were completely legit.

“This is not real,” wrote one commenter. Pam replied: “This IS real!!!! I kid you not!”

“This is awful surely you got your money back??? Wow!” another person wrote. “Nope!! She stands by her work,” Pam replied.

In another comment, Pam wrote: “This is not a joke. This is legitimately the final product I received in the mail yesterday. I passed my furious mark months ago when she wouldn’t send us anything. I was fully prepared to be scammed, money gone, and no final product! So the humour was much easier to find. Trust me, at one point my blood boiled anytime I was asked about the status of our photos!!”

Thankfully, she was able to see the humour in the situation.

“This is the most expensive comedy I’ve ever paid for!!!!” she said.