“A picture is worth thousand words”
Now imagine, what will happen if this picture is fake or manipulated.
Photoshop is undoubtedly the best photo editing program ever. But like everything useful, Photoshop can also be use with wrong intentions.
Although majority of ‘Photoshop fake’ are harmless, and are only meant for trolling folks on Facebook. But sometimes, Photoshop is also used to manipulate important documents and fake controversial images.
Usually we have forensics expert to detect Photo manipulation, but since now there are many who uses Photoshop quite well; photo manipulation is not just for experts anymore. And thus, detecting this manipulation is what, everyone should know now.
How to detect Photoshop fake –
1. Look for signs of compression :
When in doubt, whether the image is manipulated or not, you can take help of online tool called fotoforensic..
Start by uploading the image on the website. It will run some test on their server and then it will display a ‘compression heat map’ as an output.
Although they have, their own detail guide on how to analyze the compression map. In my opinion: “The area where compression is done appear brighter than the rest.” So if you see, compression varied, non-uniformly then there might by chances of manipulation.
This trick is best suited to detect fake documents.
Following two are output after scanning both original and fake document from fotoforensic
2. Check Metadata:
Whenever images are capture or created, information like date, time, camera modal and sometimes the editing software etc, are passed on as image’s metadata by default. Although this information cannot be seen directly but online image’s metadata viewercan pull out all this information, from the image.
If the metadata tell a different story then what the image provider has to say, then it can be a possible case of image manipulation.
However this method is not full proof. Often legit photos have to be manipulated to remove background objects and to make it look better. Therefore if the metadata says, that images was edited using Photoshop then it doesn’t necessary means that it is fake. Moreover if a person can fake an image, they can easily faked their metadata as well.
3. Look for the shadow:
If the image consist of some scenery or similar stuff then always look for shadows. It is hardest thing to perfect even for a Photoshop expert. Many newbie forget detailing the shadow intensity and viewing angle. And thus leaving a blind spot to detect if the image is Photoshop or not.
4. Pay attention to the image’s size:
‘Photoshop fake’ are often too big in size as compare to what the normal size should have been. This is because, Photoshop work with layers and when an image is heavily Photoshopped, the image size tends to increase from normal.
5. Think: The best way to detect if the image’s manipulation,
is by using common sense. For instance, what do you think, when you see images of ‘Aliens eating sushi in Chinese restaurant’ or ‘giant cobra swallowing adult human’. A Photoshop fake, that’s it.
is by using common sense. For instance, what do you think, when you see images of ‘Aliens eating sushi in Chinese restaurant’ or ‘giant cobra swallowing adult human’. A Photoshop fake, that’s it.
Conclusion
To find out if a image is ‘Photoshop fake’ or ‘not’, is simply a question of “who is doing the editing”. For instance, if the editor, is a noob, then he or she will leave enough trail and above mentions methods will be sufficient to detect image manipulation.
However if the suspect is an expert, then you will also need an expert. And that is why, we have people working on photo forensics department.
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