When Pam Zaring booked a professional photographer to take photos of her family, she was hoping for some simple, smiling pictures of her loved ones. 400,000 likes later, she and her family got a good laugh as did the internet with viral photo sharers.

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."