It's certainly a major upset to the narrative that would need to be explained, and new evidence would need to be demonstrated for that narrative to retain any credibility.
Aside from the fake images though, there are many other issues with the missions that people have identified over the years. Some researchers don't even spend much time on the images at all, choosing to pick apart the narrative based on all the improbabilities and impossibilities that are part of the official mission technical documentation. Aulis.com is an excellent website that collects much of that work.
Most of the people involved in Apollo were not in on the hoax end of things, their participation is not evidence the missions were successful, nor that it couldn't have been hoaxed. The recent satellite images of the landing sites are strangely far off, pixelated shots despite NASA's (and other space agency's) ability to obtain closer and higher resolution images of those sites. It has also been demonstrated (at aulis.com) that those images do not agree with the official post mission technical documentation that NASA has on record. Distances are incorrect, there are scaling issues, and in one image it's the wrong lander at that particular landing site.
I think it is plausible that the photography and video documentation were faked to be more "cinematic" as part of propaganda efforts during the Cold War.
I also think it's plausible that technical details were deliberately mucked with to stymie Soviet attempts to use it for their own space ambitions.
It's certainly a major upset to the narrative that would need to be explained, and new evidence would need to be demonstrated for that narrative to retain any credibility.
Aside from the fake images though, there are many other issues with the missions that people have identified over the years. Some researchers don't even spend much time on the images at all, choosing to pick apart the narrative based on all the improbabilities and impossibilities that are part of the official mission technical documentation. Aulis.com is an excellent website that collects much of that work.
Most of the people involved in Apollo were not in on the hoax end of things, their participation is not evidence the missions were successful, nor that it couldn't have been hoaxed. The recent satellite images of the landing sites are strangely far off, pixelated shots despite NASA's (and other space agency's) ability to obtain closer and higher resolution images of those sites. It has also been demonstrated (at aulis.com) that those images do not agree with the official post mission technical documentation that NASA has on record. Distances are incorrect, there are scaling issues, and in one image it's the wrong lander at that particular landing site.
That is all great and fascinating information.
I think it is plausible that the photography and video documentation were faked to be more "cinematic" as part of propaganda efforts during the Cold War.
I also think it's plausible that technical details were deliberately mucked with to stymie Soviet attempts to use it for their own space ambitions.