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Photoshop CS Adds Banknote Image Detection, Blocking?
Phosphor writes "A visitor to the Adobe Photoshop-for-Windows Forum (registration required to post, can log in as guest) has described a curious 'feature' with Photoshop 8 (also known as 'CS'). Seems this latest version of Adobe's flagship product has the built-in ability to detect that an image is of American currency. Something has been built into Photoshop's core coding that can detect something in images of currency and will prevent the user from opening the file. Apparently it will also do this with Euro notes; info on other currency is pending." According to other online reports, the latest version of Paint Shop Pro has similar restrictions, also known about since late last year.
Am I the only one who doesnt see this as a huge problem? I could be missing something though.....
I'm a little tea pot.
'This application does not allow the unauthorized viewing of pornographic images...'
I remember hearing an urban legend that copy machines also have a secret counter that detects when money has been copied.
So too, do I have the ability to tell American currency from other random images. If you have doubts about whether a document with an image on it in your wallet is American currency or not, please send it to me and I will verify whether it is American currency or otherwise.
I do this not for any personal gain, but only as a public service.
I have been pwned because my
With this new feature, how will the rap industry design album covers for their artists?
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Does this include, for example, the "new $20?" (Or the "old $20" that didn't have the cartoony numbers.) Or is it imprecise? Will different denominations work with it? Inquering counterf---minds want to know... ^.^
...who aren't smart enough to use older versions of their software!!
I believe many photocopiers have somewhat similar detection and preventitive measures for people trying to copy U.S. currency (printers too I have heard). Really this is one of those things that I know people will gripe about, but I cannot see a single real scenario where this truly makes a problem for anyone.
Microsoft Photo Editor Response:
'It's a feature, not a bug. Honestly! We mean it this time!'
No more pictures of you/your friends/children/boss/etc on those 7 or 100,000,000 dollar bills
Now, aside from the fact whether this is a good or a bad feature, but will localized versions of Adobe photoshop CS be detecting local currency, or will they only have routines for U.S. dollars?
:D
I don't want to feel left out, what if I wanted to use photoshop to make some fake Canadian money?
Not only is this rather invasive, as other posters have commented, but what's the point? I mean, their are dozens of other much better anti-counterfeiting measures on today's currency. So why have this "feature" at all? It really seems like a waste to me.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
These kinds of restrictions must be placed in hardware (although I think it is idiotic in nature anyway) if it must be enforced, because I could scan it, save it onto the hard drive, load up Gimp (or any other unrestricted software), change the serial number (or add other alteration), and send it to the printer.
I think the hardware I describe does exist, somewhere... perhaps someone can enlighten us about those.
Oh yeah, I do wonder what might happen if somehow this 'feature' may prevent opening of normal, user files (although unlikely).
Hmm... how about any possible DMCA issues surrounding all this?
Please direct all bug reports to
How does this work?
And next week the govt labels GIMP as a tool for counterfeiting - evil open source terrorist tool etc... :)
--enable-currency-detection
Does this include Monopoly money? I keep running out of it so I occasionally print out a little more. I believe the Microsoft monopoly does something similar... I would guess that's what they wrote MS Paint for.
True story.
Heheh, not only are Open Source programs like GIMP better [ assuming you don't need CMYK support ;-) ], free, and come with source, they also provide for infinite freedom. Nobody is going to force this kind of bullshit on open source users.
Proprietary software users, SUCK IT!
... real criminals use GIMP!
Well, at least at this stage of the game, Photoshop can't recognize Monopoly money. Boardwalk here I come!
Bet it won't stop those images I've been using to run off fake quarters...
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Ok, the it starts with banknotes.
It continues with pr0n.
But where will it end?
Who has the right to decide what kind of image I view/edit? A law, praps a judge. Certainly not a sw-producer!
The checkbox said "Requires Windows 98, NT, or better. And so I installed Linux
Seems this latest version of Adobe's flagship product has the built-in ability to detect that an image is of American currency
...
In other news: counterfeiters worldwide embrasse free software, the Gimp to receive funding from certain american-italian associations
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I believe the hardware that prevents counterfeit US currency from becoming commonplace involves special paper, watermarks, and temperature sensitive ink.
True story.
This is why the Euro notes depict arches etc that do not have any real counterpart: ECB didn't want to fuck with people who were photoshopping their holiday pictures. Since the features depicted on the euro notes don't appear in real life, no photos will be blocked by PS (except for those "pile of money" photos appearing in the business section of your news paper. They will henceforth only be piles of monopoly money -- close enough to fool the eye, but not blocked by PS).
Maybe I was living in a cave but when was Photoshop Counter Strike released ???
can you imagine, the digital cameras of the future will just show black square wherever money, or copyrighted content, or "offensive images" are supposed to be?
.. unless your images happen to contain currency"?
This is just creepy.
Sure I personally don't need to scan any money (unless of course I wanted to make some "spoofs" with someone else's picture or something), and if I did I'd use the GIMP or something.
But man.. someday.. in UNITED STATES TECHNOLOGY CONTROLS YOU!
Does Adobe even make this known? Does their web site say "edit all your images
Does it work even if the currency is a small piece of the picture? How about if it's a picture of you holding up your "first dollar" earned by your business? What if it's currency, but inverted? With every other pixel blacked out? With the top half blacked out?
Bizarre.
If stuff like this doesn't make you thankful for free software, I don't know what does.
The problem with that idea is that blank paper is worth more than Canadian money.
Game... blouses.
I try copying the new twenty on a Canon CL5000 and it came out black. Old twenty no problem. 100, too. This is USD.
But they didn't go far enough! They should also prevent you from editing images of coins!
Reminds me of a joke... A counterfeiter accidentally prints up a batch of $18 bills. He figures, what the heck, and heads off into the mountains to find some hillbillies, figuring they don't know anything about money anyway. He runs across a couple of them sitting on a porch, rolls down his window, and shouts, "Any of you got change for an $18 bill?"
One of them shouts back, "Sure do! You want 3 sixes or 6 threes?"
I mean why would they voluntarily add this feature? It makes you wonder if anyone was pushing their buttons about it...
Damn, How in the bloody hell am I going to make rent now?
err, ummm.. i mean. uhhh, hehe..
I don't REALLY MAKE money to pay rent. That was a figure of speach.. really.
insight.matrixflux.com
I guess this means I can't scan a $20 and print it on my dot matrix anymore, right?
Professional counterfeiters react to these latest developments by asking Adobe to literally "Show them the money!"(tm)
I don't want to feel left out, what if I wanted to use photoshop to make some fake Canadian money? :D
Skin a fake beaver.
(Laugh. I love Canada. It's one of the best state parks we have.)
... please send your freshly minted cash to Adobe who will see you get all you deserve :-)
...as if this has truly long-term effects. I suppose counterfeiters might prefer photoshop, but what about those that prefer Gimp? I guess since Photoshop stands in their way, then Gimp will become their new favorite.
Time and time again it is generally not the ink but the paper that most needs duplication when attempting counterfeit. I see this as a silly waste of resources. Generally speaking, if I or just about anyone I know were inclined to do anything with the image of currency, it'd probably be to deface it in some way... or maybe put my face in there... who knows what cheesy thing that has been done a hundred times before.
The point is, even though there's not likely to be a huge public outcry about this, this does offer a pretty interesting blow to free expression. Who influenced the action?
If you try to pass fake US banknotes in the US and you get busted, you'll go to jail for many years. It's far easier and safer to print a fake currency of some kind with greek-ish letters and some kind of drawing that could pass for a banknote's face, go to some small city bank and try to pass them as Euros and get them exchanged. Most of these little backward banks don't know what a Euro looks like, let alone big notes, and even if they did, they'd think it's been printed by one of the newer European countries or something. You can even use Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck on the counterfeit notes' face, so if you're busted, you can claim it was a joke.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Attention counterfeiters: I have old versions of image-editing software for sale! The price just doubled but you don't have much choice now, do you? Payment by cash only ... uh, never mind.
Do you camp out with the Pixels? Or maybe you 'storm the front' as the counter-pixels??!
I tell you it can be really annoying with the pixel perfect camping snipers out there...
The funny thing is watching all the newbies try and play with their graphic tablets. Heh, funny.
It also simultaneously emails the FBI so they can come and question you.... Vee have Vays of makking eue Taulk!
I could pre-empt some of the responses, but that would take some of the fun out of SlashDot. ;)
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
That corporation already exists. It's called the Federal Reserve.
Does anyone have an example of a file that doesn't pass thi filter? Obviously there are some minor legal considerations, but no doubt its possible to make something that fails the filter but would pass a legal test.. anyone got a link?
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
I just scanned in a 10 dollar US bill (With Photoshop 6) and then saved it as jpeg, and then tried to open it with Photoshop CS. As far as I could tell, there was no problem opening it.
I did this with about 600 dpi resolution. I'm not sure if it supposed to do this by color or by shape, but it seems to me to be complete horseshit. If it isn't, it definately isn't implemented very well. This was a new 10 BTW.
If this feature does indeed exist, it seems to be fooled very easily. If this works for anyone, try negating the image and seeing if it opens then. I would guess it can tell if it's money by the color and negating it would let it pass.
Great... I found PS CS was pretty slow on my 3Ghz pc, now I know why... it has been identifying my illegal scans of banknotes.
q: Is this problem solved if I use an illegal version of PS CS then?
Now all we need is a new version of Windows Media Player that checks all cd's and mp3's I have:
playing them backwards might find the RIAA saying "THIS IS AN ILLIGAL COPY. COPYING IS BAD"
M
I hope Adobe has a special version for the Treasury Department that doesn't have this restriction!
Point is I have seen and still see plenty of ads in wich bank notes are displayed. So how are you now supposed to make that art?
If this is true and I smell april fool then I think this is a sign of insanity. Criminals won't be stopped by this.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So at what level is Photoshop altering the image? At what point does one decide that using PS introduces error into work?
There is a lot of time spent calibrating monitors and output devices to get as close to exact as possible. But now the image processing tool itself may, based on it's unverifiable algorithmic detection, introduce a whole new class of error.
Unless the application developer actualy increases sales of their product through this feature then why bother?
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut (where's my tinfoil hat anyway?), if this is of benefit only to the reserve bank then how was Adobe/Jasc/Xerox/etc convinced to implement this?
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
Obviously, the government has something to do with this (the government always seems to have a role in censorship). Interesting that end user's don't hear about it from the company or the government.
If you are going to add something to your product, it seems reasonable to inform your customer base. It's not like PS isn't in a comfortable market position. Apparently, they feel so comfortable that they don't even need to announce they are censoring content in their products.
Seems so strange that Photoshop now has sensoring - practically counter productive. A feature in 180 degree sense of the word.
Photoshop scans every image, and even the clipboard, for banknotes. Since the algo seems to be pretty smart (rotation etc. doesn't matter) i guess it's rather slow. People have been reporting that CS is slower than PS7 on the adobe forums for a while, i guess now we know the reason.
keep it simple.
All I can say is my panties are definately in a bunch over this!! I have some pretty ugly relatives. What if Photoshop gives me error messages regarding the following: "Your family is so unattractive that we are redirecting you to the web where you can pick out better-looking people to populate your Adobe Family Photo Album.
It could happen.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
So, really, this approach is fundamentally flawed. Gave a few coders an interesting challenge, though!
Stop the brainwash
A group of GNU hackers implements a "compatibility" plugin with this mode for GIMP. Hackers worldwide are asked to send in notes of all currencies and nominals. As the authors say: "Of course the solution will be completely open-source. For now it is in alpha stage though. It correctly recognises my Monopoly notes, but Frank has donated a worn $1 and the test result was negative."
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I find it interesting that the Slashdot community is upset about this 'protection from counterfeiting', but isn't up in arms about the required product activation. With more than half of SlashDot using the Windows platform, you'd think there would be more concern about this.
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDCAD=X&d=c&t=2y
Or here against the euro: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDEUR=X&d=c&t=2y
Enjoy your expensive imports.
John Ashcroft
The image processing industrie and their providers (producers of scanners, printers, photo cameras,...) have erased themselves from the face of earth after mplementing restrictions to prevent the photographing, scanning, printing or copying of "classified objects" (like bank notes, nude people, copyrighted objects,
Since more and more pictures turned (parially) black, people got bored and started painting (again?). The "beautyful arts" now have an all-time-high! Kodak, Adobe HP and Xerox have filed for self-induced bankrupty! Hurray!
The checkbox said "Requires Windows 98, NT, or better. And so I installed Linux
probably doesn't stand for "Currency Stealer"
Photoshop 6 to print my bills.
Of course there's a privacy issue: try to copy currency and you're automatically referred to an anti-counterfeiting page on the Treasury Department's website, according to the reports. If the recording industry has the wherewithal to track down IP addresses so I suspect does the government.
Could someone, please, add this feature to the Gimp? We cannot fall behind industry leaders!... Oh, wait... Now I'm really confused.
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
If you've ever tried to exchange currency you'll find most require a passport to exchange it. Even if you pass it off I think you'll soon be getting a knock on the door. Small town banks might not enforce the rule but most will. Might want to be careful what currency you choose to knock off. Some may not be worth as much as the price of paper and ink.
Don't let your models wear green.
Would it be possible to cut up the bill, scan, it and then reassemble it using the software? Could you then print all of the pictures at once?
Does the software recognize parts or the whole picture?
I'm not much of an image manipulator, just wondering.
Better? Have you even USED Photoshop CS? It's like sex. Sex with pixels.
I have Photoshop CS on my workstation and I must say this new 'feature' doesn't work very well.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"It's no use. You'll get nothing but black fog."
"So it's a Goldstar."
-- This void intentionally left null.
I tested the Mac PS CS version and it had no problems scanning and opening a 600DPI file of the new $20. And before anyone subpoenas /. for my personal data, I only copied one side, never printed it, and destroyed the data afterwards, which is perfectly legal.
I thought it might be part of the Digimarc plugin, I usually delete those but I forgot to do it on the new version. So it's not part of Digimarc, they're present on my machine's installation of Photoshop. I guess this currency-detection thing is only on the PeeCee version.
What are you blathering on about? The Euro notes have far better anti-counterfeit measures on them than the uniqueness of the images on them. Perhaps you've not seen one, but they have metallic foil elements, watermarks, etc that would be impossible to fake without some serious hardware.
You might be able to pass off a fake US note easily enough in the right conditions (dim lighting in a busy, smokey bar) but you'd have to find a blind barman to be able to pass off your colour laser copies of a Euro note as the real thing: as far as I'm aware, nobody makes a laser printer that lets you emboss silver foil onto (and into) a piece of paper.
You're whole "unique arches to avoid confusion with holiday snaps" argument is ridiculous too. The reason why the Euro notes have images of various styles of European achitecture thoughout the ages on them (Gothic, etc) is because those styles are generic enough to be found across the continent. If you had specific pieces of achitecture on the notes, say a 10 Euro note with the Eiffel Tower on it and a 20 Euro note with the Leaning Tower of Pisa on it, then you'd find countries getting into pissing contests over whose monuments shoud appear on the highest value notes. You'd also run out of note values before you ran out of countries, and thereby alienate any countries that weren't represented.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It's true. We just got a brand new color Ricoh copier and I tested it with a $20 bill (Canadian). Print came out all yellow. I don't quite know how they do it but it works.
Three days after releasing the new dollar, a forger was caught by Polish police. He made a $1, "hand-made", just for skills and proof-of-concept, but Polish police detected hard to notice mistakes. US police experts when asked about authenticity of the bill couldn't believe it was forged as it passed all their tests and only after pointing out the mistakes by polish experts they admitted it's forged.
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How do you know it only scans for banknotes? Maybe it scans your private pictures for known terrorists and sends the information during the next product activation? Next thing you know a SWAT team raids your house because your uncle Pete, who has a long beard, looks like a terrorist to PS CS.
What if you have pictures of chemical elements needed to make biological weapons on your computer? Does PS CS know you're a chemistry student?
Go ahead, make tinfoil hat jokes all you like, but do you know it's only limited to banknotes?
keep it simple.
Sombody should test how well this feature really works. E.g. Will it detect :
1. An image of half a banknote
2. An image with the colours inverted
3. The mirror image of a bank note
etc. etc.
siener's youtube channel
The only reason I've ever edited images of currency was to produce joke bills with somebody elses face on them, or 1,000,000 notes.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Photoshop... what is THAT all about?... is it goode, or is it WHACK?
They would just jump at all the newest most-protected technology and spent long nights reverse-engineering it to access and decode most secret government papers in the "forbidden patterns" memory :)
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This just means that it is possible to forge bills with PC graphic software. Where's that PS 7 cd... :)
I think the usability is enough of a hinderance to the counterfiters.
I think the question that should be asked here is not what other currency and/or ways to open images of currency, but -> the question should be; "What else is embedded in this software to stop the user doing?.
Why stop at bank notes?...
As the posts before me have clarified that it takes more than a software recognizing an image that makes for a genuine looking counterfeit, can the developers at adobe resist their urges to code-masturbation.
Beer is good food
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
I was using Photoshop 7.0 on OS X and ran into a similar problem. I was scanning a Versace ad from a magazine (it was for a random class project), and I needed to be able to blow up a portion of the ad a reasonable amount. I planned to put it on a large print, so I scanned at 800dpi. Photoshop apparently saw some sort of watermark in the ad itself (or the magazine page, it was in one of those gigantic fashion mags with like 500 pages, 8 of which are content) and refused to allow me to do anything with it other than resizing. I scanned at a lower dpi (400), and was able to circumvent the problem. Seemed kind of ghetto to me, though. I haven't tried it under CS, but I'll bet the watermarks exist there, as well.
The first obvious project is to locate and trivially disable the check. This is no harder than disabling routine anti-piracy checks, and we all know those are solved within hours of release.
:D
The second, and far more interesting project is to the reverse engineer the check itself. It would be facinating to see the US government's own algorithm for flagging/detecting US currency. It would then be almost trivial to embed a false "US currency" flag in almost any image. You could post your entire porn collection on the web with an invisible bogus "US currency" watermark
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I did some more tests. Not only will this stop opening an image such as this image, but it will also NOT allow pasting any significant portions of the above image, or !!! not even let you paste in a SCREENSHOT of windows image viewer opening that said image.
Wow! They must be doing these does-this-look-like-money checks on every operation on the image that involves getting image data from outside the application! Crazy.
the program "provides an error message regarding the (il)legality of currency reproduction and an "information" button that takes you to the web."
:-)
i wonder if the feds have the "Internet Protocol Address Verifier" built in as well.
Just wait until Adobe gets payed off to include corporate logos from being scanned or altered either. Seems far fetched? Well...just read my sig.
Life is not for the lazy.
Counterfit Stopper.
It would be interesting to see if this works if you scan a copy of a banknote (not an original) One way of doing this would be to use som kind of ink that has a specific spectral response which could be used by the scanner but a pre-existing copy would not have it. Then you would not have to use any image recognition.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
However, editing images of currency is quite useful. For example, many images of the Euro currency were shown to the public trough various media before its introduction.
This was supported by both the government and the retailers, to increase acceptance of the new currency. Furthermore, spreading images of money can aid in detecting counterfeit banknotes by the public - how should someone know what a 500 euro banknote looks like if no one is allowed to print an image of it, or even show one online?
Since I work in the graphical sector, I used images of currency sometimes, mostly for decorative purposes. This has absolutely nothing to do with counterfeiting, but does need the advanced editing features photoshop has. To make counterfeit money, you would just have to print a good copy, which can be performed by any simple image editing program.
Also prevent you from copying banknotes. There's a pattern of dots in a specific shad of yellow on banknotes which is recognised by the photocopier (and presumably also by PhotoShop), which rejects the copy. A mate of mine did some research into it, and it's possible to draw a picture using a yellow(ish) pen that'll be refused, if you know the dot pattern.
That's a lovely dialog box, but it still could be a hoax. I'll believe it when someone tells me specifically how to cause it to appear on my Mac PS CS version. I couldn't make it happen in quick testing.
It worked for swedish 500 krona notes :) (had to test)
Why do we continually allow governments and corporations to treat the 99.99% of us that are law-abiding citizens like the 0.01% minority of criminals?
I get VERY annoyed with these people in high places that assume that just because the possibility is there that I *might* use something to commit a crime, that same something should be denied from me because I have no concept of morality myself.
How long before they stop selling knives in dinner cutlery because potentially I could stab someone with one?
In the case of software, and particularly commercial software (where there's always the focus on getting a new product on the store shelves before checking it fully), we get these unnecessary new "features" that add more bloat and bugs to a product *AND* end up paying more for those features to be added because of the increased development costs.
I'm no Communist but if there is one reason to support Open Source software development, it's to ensure that that we keep our freedoms to do what we want with software and to ensure that our the majority's own ability to discern "right from wrong" acts as our guide, not the imposed restrictions of a few "high power" individuals.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
We used to sell photocopiers in our family business around 18 years ago. I remember when the first copier came in, a Sharp, the police also came for a visit not too long afterwards. They wanted to know who was buying it, and expressly forbid either us or any customer from photocopying money. Now, we were very curious, so one of the salesmen took a Canadian $50 and copied the one side of an 8.5"x11" 20lb bond copier paper. To be honest, it was far too glossy to be passed off as a bill, and the paper didn't feel right. Still, in a stack of bills it could easily be passed over in a bill counter if it was properly aligned, which in and of itself was impossible. Essentially, it wasn't feasible. Anyway, fast forward to today, all color copiers come with a currency copying detection system. They detect the paper notes of most major currencies, and if anyone attempts to copy them, a flag is set in the machine such that the next time it gets serviced it actually informs the technician, who then informs the police. I believe some machines even cease operation until a technician is called. It's basically a big mess, so any potential criminal would still be better off using a PC with scanner and inkjet printer, which is how most counterfeiting is done AFAIK.
What is worrying here is not the fact that this feature was built into Photoshop but that it was done secretly. This kind of secret arrangement between companies and government has long tradition in the US, but think about other nice features that can be put into closed source software as a result. Some may not be as easy to detect.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if it does that. Why not? It already has the undocumented feature of not being able to open the image of the notes, so why not add an extra feature of emailing the FBI. Perhaps your printer driver has a similar routine for detection, but perhaps it still prints, but just drops the quality or something. The FBI could put two and two together, and then perform a warrantless search of your house when you're away (with their new powers granted in the name of fighting terrorism)and uncover your huge stack of printed 20's.
www.gimp.org dies after thousands of users flood the server attempting to download the software...
Anything that copies must be false.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I recently evaluated several models of color card scanners to scan drivers licenses and when I misplaced my license I grabbed a bill out of my wallet and tried to use that to test.
Much to my surprise, the bill got about 30% in before the was a pause and the rest of the scanned image was blank. I tried again and got the same results. I turned it around, all four orientations and got the same results. About 1/3 of the bill goes in then scanning would either stop or go blank (depending on scanner).
Curious, I cut out piece of post-it and put it over different parts of the bill. I found that putting a piece over either the beginning edge of the portrait, the entire bill would scan, albeit with yellow section. By repeating it, I could in theory stitch together a complete bill.
This made me wonder...is there something that the Secret Service has forced image scanning and editing providers to adopt? These were all rather cheap scanners, a couple seemed like overseas knock-offs. Yet they all seemed to exhibit the same behavior! That seems a remarkable coincidence.
Perhaps there is a barcode or something near the portait, perhaps not visible to the human eye, but completely noticeable to a scanner (some kind of moire pattern or whatever). Something that is consistant enough to flag in the scanner drivers.
Then again, flat scanners don't seem to have this problem, although the story goes that each will embed its information into the scans to allow for tracking.
Anyway...maybe I'll just hang on to my ancient Asus a while longer...I don't necessarily care to scan money or not...but if *someone* can get this kind of image checking in the drivers of half a dozen card scanners...who knows what else *someone* can get in there?
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
.. which is linked from the site the error message refers you to says you CAN make full-colour copies of US currency, as long as the image is single-sided and at least 75% smaller or 150% larger than a real note.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
if the GIMP team will have time to rip this feature off before 2.0.
I wonder how many other law abiding citizens, who would have never considered scanning and printing US currency, have done so tonight just because of this story?
My experience:
I scanned a crisp new $20 at various resolutions, color and black and white, from the TWAIN interface in Photoshop, and Photoshop CS refused to handle the image. It simply displayed a warning dialog and suggested visiting www.rulesforuse.org. The bill did scan as line art, so the algorithm must do some fine detail pattern matching, as opposed to detecting colors or sizes.
The bill was successfully scanned into Paint Shop Pro 7. Even when printed at 1440dpi, it is obviously counterfeit, but that didn't stop me from accidently mistaking it for the real bill when I had set it aside for a few minutes while doing other work. And this is simply printed on one side on normal inkjet paper, cut out freehand with scissors, and not even color matched.
So I guess the real lesson here is if you tell someone you can't do something, they are more likely to try it out. I just saw a show on the History Channel about the history of US currency, and afterwards, I didn't even have the slightly notion of scanning and printing out a bill. But here I am, after skimming an article on Slashdot, with a fake (but probably passable) $20 bill.
Now I'm an adult, and I understand the necessity of preventing counterfeit currency and the punishment given to counterfeiters, so I have no desire to do anything more than this quick test. But I can only imagine how many 14 year olds are cranking out their own bills tonight, thanks to Adobe!
This could be used more of as a tool by counterfeiters to check if their bills look good enough!
Counterfeiting has changed and grown with the proliferation of high-speed, highpowered computers and other information management devices and the action by Adobe is an interesting attempt to close the door long after the horse has bolted.
Before computers and high-resolution printers, counterfeiting had to rely on (photo)lithographic methods to produce high-resolution, multiple-pass prints on paper that was treated in some way to resemble the paper(s) on which currency is printed.
In the old days, printing technology itself placed the bar to the counterfeiter far higher than it is today. Once, generating counterfeits required a lab where one could generate plates, the skills of a (bribable) lithographer, inks, paper, other materials and techniques to 'age' the counterfeit notes, and expensive, difficult-to-transport equipment in the form of printers capable of making acurate, multiple-pass copies of high-resolution material at high speed.
That was in the old days.
Now, the advent and dessemination of better and better copying/printing/color printing technology has certainly given better tools to the professional counterfeiter who needs to burn plates for large(r) print runs, but, more importantly, these technologies have given birth to the 'casual counterfeiter': a person or an organization that specializes in small-scale counterfeiting operations which are difficult to detect and shut down because the equipment and techniques they employ are (comparatively) cheap and easily abandoned while the techniques they employ largely eliminate the need to approach someone with a high-level of skill.
A second problem in stopping the casual counterfeiter (who may be simply someone with access to a color copier) is that his/her product is most often used against especially vulnerable targets; places where business conditions make counterfeit detection difficult like crowded bars at peak times or in places where the staff's low-training level in spotting counterfeit currency makes a counterfeit note's acceptance more likely.
It is response to both high- and low-level threats that has driven U.S. currency design for the last decade or so and prompted the adoption of numerous currency authentication features, including the readable, embedded strip that glows under ultraviolet light, the microprint which commercial-grade laser printers cannot reproduce and the color-changing ink (a swiss patent used by the U.S. Government under license) and the now ubiquitous watermark.
This brings us back to Adobe Photoshop and where the most recent versions of the software contain provisions for detecting when the image the software is to manipulate is an image of U.S. and other currencies. Without further information, it is easy to imagine that Adobe's introduction of the plug-in is little more than a conciliatory gesture in terms of its effectiveness.
First, it must be taken into consideration that unless the plug-in in question is woven into the fabric of the software so that it cannot be used without it, tech-savvy criminals using photoshop will certainly find the plug-in and remove it.
Second, all things being equal, it is by no means unimaginable that all versions of Photoshop previous to the one under discussion still possess the ability to manipulate images of U.S. currency without hindrance, and it is highly unlikely that clever criminals will find an upgrade-path irresistable.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
In the police museum in London, they have examples of British 50 penny (5 sided coins) that have had the 'corners' filed off to make 10 penny pieces. I understand the offenders were indeed Irish.
No sharp objects, I'm a programmer!
I can imagine a bunch of ways images of bank notes could be used legally, as a texture on money for a 3D rendering, a background on a cover of a rap album, to make a obviously fake note for toys, etc...
This is just as silly as banning export of encryption software, it only affects honest people, not criminals, they just go around it.
Sindri Traustason.
1. You design a circuit, the software believes it's a bomb and messes it up? Time to get back to the old drawing board! 2. Spelling is less than perfect, IM starts censorship! 3. i. you post ascii image of currency ii. ....
iii. PROFIT!
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that the federal law has always forbidden making images of U.S. currency. All publicized images of currency I've seen are partial or modified. I suspect that the letter of the law was broken in the process of making those images.
There are only 6,863,795,529 types of people in the world.
In New Zealand, all the notes have a transparent section. If Euro notes and American dollar notes had the same thing then counterfeiting would be next to impossible.
This transparent section would easily be checked even in a dim bar. If you can't see through part of the note, or the transparent section has the wrong shape - call the police!
-Nivag
Theres already enough advertising anyway, and promoting gambling is bad anyway (as it encourages gambling addiction, so they are doing us a favor for that too.. And adobe have the right to do whatever they want with their software, and they dont need to disclose what they do with it either, it is their personal right. If software manufacturors listed everything their software could and could not do, the packaging would be bland. If adobe wants to screw it up entirely, and make it so its completely disfunctional, they legally and morally can.. word will spread its a bad product, thats the way it works.
Is the copy protection/cash detection really based on the physical properties, or maybe additionally on image content detection also?
It would be interesting to hear about:
1) copying notes in various orientations
2) printing notes (on those huge scanner/copier/printer monsters) from previously scanned images
3) Above in various ways, like a rubbish image with a note pasted somewhere on it in 53 degree angle, for example.
Anyone?
Must be some interesting software engineering jobs there if the machines run some kind of recognition software on all operations..
It is not a technology's place to limit how you may and may not use it. This is one of the greatest strengths of Free Software - that you have the freedom to do with your programs whatever you want with them. (Even give a copy to a friend!)
.NET product.
Though I note that such restrictions are not new. Doesn't MS VisualC++ have something in their UA that states that you can't use their product to create a word processor or something to the sort? And God forbid you benchmark a
Use Free Software. Your computer is your own to do with as you wish, as are the programs on it. Don't accept any limitations.
int ReadsTooMuchStallman = TRUE, StillGottaPoint = TRUE, NeedsMoreCoffee=TRUE;
% pwd /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS/Adobe Photoshop CS.app/Contents/MacOSClassic
% strings Adobe\ Photoshop\ CS | grep -i banknote
$$$/Open/Alert/Level1=This application does not support the unauthorized processing of banknote images.^r^rFor more information, select the information button below for Internet-based information on restrictions for copying and distributing banknote images or go to www.rulesforuse.org.
So it's definately in there, but does it work? I don't know.
lets not forget that the dollar has slumped to a near record low and the US is 7 trillion dollars in debt....
isn't that like you know.. wastefull? slow? silly?
After I upgrade (for free via a SOFTWARE CRACK) then how am I going to make Goatse dollars?....
[I give this copy protection 3 months at most]
~
* smile *
what if I wanted to use photoshop to make some fake Canadian money? :D
:-P
Why bother, the blank paper's worth more!
Tried scanning a UK 10 pound note and Photoshop CS would not even let me import it into the application - it threw up the money warning and that's it. So yes, it seems that the UK is also protected :)
I built a system for my Dad (XP home, scanner etc.), and has to test the scanner worked
Car analogies break down.
If I were so inclined, I'd counterfeit 1500$, and use them to buy 1lb of high-grade marijuana. dealers don't check for counterfeits. Then I'd unload it on the streets for 30$ / 1/8oz bag. It'd be all profit!
what happens to those artists who do legal things with banknote copying
advertising instantly comes to my mind, there are often ads where you can see banknotes, those people who make those ads often use photoshop
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?
Hmmmm I tried opening this file with CS and it worked.
I tried it with this file and it also worked.
So these scans were maybe too low res. Normally when counterfieters pass off false currency its in a bar or someplace where people arent paying attention, so it looks like these restrictions wont stop anything at all, since both those files could produce a note that was indistinguishable in poor lighting conditions. These new "features" were probably put in at the behest of "the feds".
This means a coupla things:
Mo more high res Parodies
All the old versions of Photoshop, especially 7, will now never ever go away.
Old style film repro gets to live a few more decades.
Counterfeit cash is here to stay. After all it only works if someone accepts it in return for goods and services. If that recieving person is dumb / untrained, thats all it takes to transform it into real money at the time of that one transaction. After that, the counterfieter doesnt care what happens to it.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
After paying Adobe for Photoshop 8/CS there should be no problem with you having any 20-dollar bills to scan.
I always wondered why my submarine sound gained a click of spurious noise at the end of the file.
Damn you, Adobe!
Incidentally, what did you use to make the "before and after" comparison?
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Those using Adobe Photoshop for illegal purposes will just end-up using a patch that will circumvent the supposed feature leaving those who may be doing something legitimate stuck looking for another application to use.
If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!
At high resolutions you're going to get dots instead of a picture, especially with low quality stuff as magazines. 300 dpi should be enough for a magazine.
Yep, just confirmed it myself.
N ew -100Euro(N)-2002-donatedpw_f.jpg
I did a simple google search, and downloaded the first image of a banknote I could find:
http://aes.iupui.edu/rwise/banknotes/euro/EuroP
I get the "this software does not support the unauthorized proccessing of currency" message. And may I ask how it knows its unauthorized?
Can anyone comment on the legality of cracking such a protection? It would seem insane any sane legal system to forbid me to instruct my own CPU to carry our a few NOP's instead of a CJNE, but as the DMCA has proved, many countries do not have sane legal systems.
'This application does not allow tasteless images...'
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
>> isn't that like you know.. wastefull? slow? silly? Apparently you've never used photoshop. Of course it's slow, wasteful, and silly, and no one would notice.
but to license yourself a copy of Photo$hop CS you'll probably need to print money anyway, how secure is it, could you segment the image and then re-assemble it later and save, or is writing money forbidden too?
:D
of course, this kind of limitation isn't present in TheGIMP, and it's not the kind of thing i'd expect to see implemented in an OSS app any time soon either
Software Freedom Day!.
http://zone-mr.ath.cx/temp/currencyimport.jpg
This is a euro note with the vast majority removed. It still triggers the currency detection. The area which isn't masked out contains thin horizontal lines, with a fluctuation of brightness along each line.
Oddly enough, adding any black text in the white area is enough to circumvent the detection. (!)
It opens In ImageReady ok:D
:D
Oops they fucked up
I'm not saying I support this in any way but here is my 2c anyway:
If you wanted to implement this kind of control, wouldn't it be more practical to make what Adobe is doing a 'feature' of printers and other imaging hardware? So instead of not being able to open/edit/save the file, you just can't print it.
Sure you can transfer the image electronically (email, web etc.) but what good is it if you can't print it out?
TSJ
Oh shit!
Now how is bUSH going to fund the deficit????
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
1. Open image in ImageReady :D
2. Click import to Photoshop
3. Use image until you're hearts content
Enjoy. Adobe are dumbasses.
Where I live at all the stores have a magic pen. They swipe it across all bills over 10$ if it turns the wrong color you are in trouble. If the clerk gets cought not marking the money she/he is fired.
This poor dunk KY also. So there arent a lot of high end copiers/scanners around
Now that software can recognise banknotes, how long will it be before your computer starts demanding money from you!
"I said, gimme a $50 - not a $5!"
I am anarch of all I survey.
Maybe this technology should be incorporated in browsers too to avoid certain pictures. Hell, why just browsers - throw it into every OS with a gui.
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds... that is when the world will end.
Now I can't scan pameela anderson's photograph with dollars over...
oh never mind.
It probably isn't worthwhile counterfeiting it anyway :-)
With 10 minutes work on the jpeg, it appears that there is no testing during the processing of the image, but SOLELY during the import operations (convert to ps internal format routine).
The import routine can be defeated with a 3degree shear of the original image - then the image can be sheared back in again.
But of course this isn't to stop counterfeiters and never was. It is to protect Adobe from new laws of responsibility.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
The system that's used to electronically identify money over here is very simple...
Take a look at this image of a 10 note. Notice the yellow dots... on the left image they're on the watermark in the middle, on the right image they're part of the flowers.
That specific pattern appears on every UK bank note, and (AFAIK) on every euro bank note. Checking for it is a simple matter of finding a couple of possible dots, and looking to see if the others in the pattern are there...
So -- is there anything similar on US currency?
Can this technology be adapted to create a firewall that recognizes and refuses to forward the goatse.cx image?
Tested with Photoshop 7 for OS X. Here's what you do:
1. Open the banknote image with ImageReady (fortunately, ImageReady does not have the same banknote protection as photoshop)
2. Go to File > Edit in Photoshop
3. Viola. The image loads in Photosohp without being checked.
Counterfeiters rejoice!
the way they've phonIEd up yOUR monIE buy now, the fancy printer payper would cost more than the fakesmile.
lookout bullow. it's what's not been priNTdead yet that's really scarIE if you happen to be a corepirate nazi felon/puppet?
That's rediculous. The image you linked is nowhere near high enough resolution to be able to produce a fake.
Oh well, I guess now it's...
ALL YOUR PASTE ARE BELONG TO US
I have a website. It's about Macs.
To support your comment, here is a Darwin Award mention of someone who tried to pass $16 bills...
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
I did similar testing with Paint Shop Pro 8. It doesn't allow pasting money images. Even a screen shot is impossible to paste.
It pop-ups an dialog which says "The application doesn't support unauthorized processing of banknote images." The dialog has link to this site:
http://www.rulesforuse.org/
There seems to be quite a lot of countries listed.
While I personally can see the validity of having such restrictions, the problem I believe is not the specific context of the restriction (counterfeiting of cash) but the problem itself of there being a restriction there in the first place. If you take a look at the bigger picture, software products and business it seems support digital rights management. I mean, that might sound obsurd that stopping counterfeiting can be seen as digital rights management but this actually is digital rights management, the only different is nobody has the right to view, edit or copy an original bank note. If you couple this with the trend of disabling overall copying of music whether or not you own it and in a few short years the copying restrictions placed on virtually any file and software on a (generally) proprietry machine you can develop a bigger picture of the problem (no pun intended). In a few years will this be a socially acceptable 'feature'? To have the censorship of certain material digitally stopped? The next problem is if you eliminate one means of stopping this problem it wont be affective until you eliminate all means of stopping the problem. If you shy away from the money thing for a minute and think about a word processing software package this clearly seems wrong to me. Will the next Microsoft Word disallow or blank out words like "terrorist", "bomb" or "assassination"? The reason this is inappropriate is because there are thousands of different contexts you may want to copy money that are nothing to do with counterfeiting. Just the same as there are a thousand different contexts you may have "assassinate president" in a peice of writing. What I dont find quite surprising about this is probably going to be the beginning of a 'feature' that will for the most part will generally be ignored, as it seems in todays world Joe public plays ignorance to the eroding of his rights. If you ask me. This is something that should be nipped in the bud before it becomes so widespread its accepted. Then again, with all the apparently ignored DRM issues arising already it may quite possibly be too late to do anything about it whatsoever.
You cannot open a Scan of a $20 in Photoshop CS
but you can open a Scan of a $20 in Illustrator CS
I mean how the hell are they going to get all the copies of the latest into the product to prevent it.. Unless the PS owner is a bigger player than Hefner.
But why? UK 10 have holograms printed on them, which a colour copier/printer can't duplicate anyway (for the next couple of years)
Did you try copying a car tax disc? Thats worth 150+ pounds a throw, and locked away inside the car so prying eyes can't feel tha paper or test with a UV lamp. I do notice that UK car tax dics now have holograms, probably because the latest colour inkjets are too good at printing forgeries..
They'll ahve to prise my XSANE and GIMP from my cold dead hard drive before I stop scanning currency!
Naked people detection is hard techinical issue.You can have a hard time to implement.
You can have a even harder time to implement programs which excludes sumo wrestler.
No one could ever make a good working sumo/porno-detection program,IIRC.
This is great news! The more software companies pull this crap, the more people will migrate to utilizing open source software / other software that respects people?s own moral judgments. I think this is just to protect them in court if a trial was to ever come up and it was discovered that the counterfeiter used an adobe package etc?how and why, I do not know, but as with so many other things, this is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. I?ve forgotten, isn?t America supposed to be a free and democratic country? This sounds pretty communist to me?because I?m sure there was some pressure from political entities to put this feature in. Adobe doesn't realize that this is a violation of a basic principle, which will continue at an exponential rate. At some point, people will get fed up with this "we'd like to protect you from yourself" garbage, and just choose other options. As someone said above, if you don't like it, use something else, and people will use something else eventually, and companies like Adobe will loose market share, die out, and then sit and wonder why over the next decade. *laughs* This is the dumbest trend a software company could start...and it?s only going to hurt them in the end.
Good thing I've kept every disk set and cd back to version Photoshop 2.0. I wonder if I'll need an older computer to run the older software? Good think I've kept all the computers I've ever owned, and they're in full working order.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Place a banknote in position on a scanner and arrange it so you can muck about with the electronics in the bottom half and not risk moving the note. Open up the scanner and disconnect the common terminals of the green and blue LEDs, leaving only the reds. Scan your note -- the resulting image will be in shades of red only. Disconnect the red LEDs and connect up the green ones, scan and repeat with the blue ones.
You now have three separate images of the banknote with just the red, green and blue bits -- in other words, where not to put the cyan, magenta and yellow inks respectively. Change the shades of green {needs cyan and yellow} to shades of blue {cyan and magenta}, and the shades of blue to green, and superimpose the three images. Remember the note didn't move between scans {did it?}, so they will line up automatically. You now have a distorted colour image of a banknote.
To print it out, you need to modify an ink cartridge by flushing it out with solvent, then refilling the magenta inkwell with yellow ink and the yellow inkwell with magenta ink. This will cause blue to print as green and green to print as blue. Red {magenta and yellow} and black {all three colours, or a colour in its own right} will not be affected by these switcheroonie shenanighans, of course.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Because of the ubiquity of the dollar, you will find staff around the world whose job it is to monitor counterfeiting of the greeenback.
Got a new HP Scanjet 5p scsi scanner some years ago when $400 for a scanner /was/ absurdly cheap. I hooked this up and of course the first thing to be scanned was a brand new crisp bill. We scanned, and scanned it, and never could get it scan right. Here we finally had a scanner to play with, capable of 16 million colors and we could only get grayscale!
Finally it dawned on us that this could be an anti-counterfitting measure. So we took out another bill, one that wasn't crisp from the fed and we got color. We repeated the experiment along those lines. Conclusion, the scanner would not scan the color of money! If the bill was even a little bit worn, it would scan correctly, but not if it was still shiny. Note to any feds, never did tried printing any, had no printer.
I do a lot of freelance work (recently for a financial institution). Given that certain industries like banks, investments, morgage loan companies, and... you know... like any retail establishment that has coupons or gift certificates might have a need for a dollar bill to be in their advertising... what am I supposed to tell my clients?
"Sorry, I can't do what you want because I was stupid enough to upgrade to Adobe Creative Suite."
At least I still have all that cheezey CorelDraw clipart.
What's next... video money recognition in Premiere?
...., but I cannot see a single real scenario where this truly makes a problem for anyone.
The only problem it creates for me is that it slows the application down. I'll be sticking to PS7 because it has a definite speed advantage and PS8 doesn't seem to offer many compelling reasons to upgrade. And from the forums I've read, I'm not the only one. So I guess, in the end, the only people this could really make a problem for is Adobe.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
This is another reason to use Open Source Software :)
I think somebody should write GIMP plugin called "paint a buck". Input parameters:
1) 150/300/600/1200/2400 dpi
2) USD/EUR/LVL
3) 5/10/20/50/100/200/500
I don't have PhotoShop CS, if somebody does could they try the following and see if it'll work?
1) invert the colours of the image and try to manipulate it with PhotoShop.
2) invert the orientation of the image.
3) remap the colours prior to PhotoShop then map them back within PhotoShop.
It's not that I really care about photoshopping money, but I'm curious about how well their security works.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Argh, after reading through all these post's I cannot believe that the most obvios complaint has not been raised.. Photoshop can be a HUGE memory and CPU cycle hog, especially when dealing with 1200dpi images and such. It just HAS to use alot of memory and cpu to do the calculations. What I do not want is photoshop wasting time on the calculations that must be necessary to 'currency recognise' Who in their right mind wants a bloated load of SPYWARE that does a thousand little checks to see if you are behaving yourself. Cmon, this is a form of spying, PSCS is spying on my image content to ensure that it conforms..
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
Seeing as we have plastic money with see through bits. You know, sensible copying protection rather than relying on dumb arse protection.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I've just scanned 500 LVL (~900 USD) banknote with both Photoshop and Corel Photopaint. They work great! Lets print it!
Someone will get around this, legally or not.
Can they add a feature to detect porn so the chicks in the magazines arent digital airbrush creations? Show off those tats, scars and mutant limbs! Btw, what if you are working on a patterned mask that it decides is too money like? What about art? What about if you need to make some fake money image for a website or raffle or something? Adobe has really gone to the shitter, from what I've heard from insiders.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Has anyone thought of a webcrawler that automatically crawled the web and fed it into a program with similar technology to this? It'll sort into two different folders: Porn and /dev/null :D
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
Downgrade to Photoshop 7, problem solved.
Wow! They must be doing these does-this-look-like-money checks on every operation on the image that involves getting image data from outside the application! Crazy.
They probably do it at the same time as the colorspace transformation (which is done on every image-importing operation). Why doesn't someone try altering the color in (say) GIMP, and then try importing it. They might just detect the *color* of money.
Make the money out of something else like plastic
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
It checks for every action you do with the image. I bet PhotoShop 7 will be a lot faster when you circumvent it.
I expect the first hack to be released coming days.
Why wouldn't it be possible for Adobe Photoshop CS (or any other commercial, proprietary, non-Open Source) application to just report it automatically, online, via a couple of small UDP/TCP packets to the proper authorities? Not only will they get your machine name, serial number of the software, IP address, provider, etc. but we're all connected anyway, you probably wouldn't even see the packets go across.
Just something to think about.
Just make yourself a baseball cap of dollar bills and all cameras will deny scanning your image.
For that, wouldn't you need a network connection to get to IMDB?
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
It does not say I can't copy Canadian 20s and then have then converted at a money exchange, although for the amount of ink and paper I'd have to use, and with exchange rates, I think I would be spending more than I was making?
Considering the porno biz is probably one of Adobe's largest market segments for photoshop, such a move would be very, very stupid.
We don't need crap like this- it's perfectly legal to scan in a dollar bill, you just can't reproduce it within a certain percentage of the original's size.
What we need are people who are smart enough to look for any of a half dozen easily recognized protection features, or shit, simply realize when they're handling inkjet paper instead of valid currency(there's a clear difference in feel any cashier worth their salt will recognize.)
Please help metamoderate.
Ok,
I had a bit of a play with your jpg (thanks BTW). It seems that its looking for certain features - if you open it in paint and then cut and paste there is a limit on the size of the "chunks" you can paste in. Especially from the face or the shield. However by taking small enough bits (9 or 10) you can cut and paste the whole image in.
inverting and rotating (as far as paints minimal abilites go) have no effect.
If you try and scan or copy a bill, the scanner or copier will lock up and require service. When it's service it will be plainly obvious to the service technician that you tried to copy money.
Most scanners and copiers already have this protection built in.
..that our new corporate overlords are thinking for us. Makes keeping 7.0 around that much easier, and solves my problem of upgrading. I won't.
Wonder what else it won't open?
I read that too. But it's a terribly outdated rule and leaves loads of ambiguity when you put the money images into the computer. What kind of DPI is allowed? What about holographic imaging systems that could detect every minute detail?
I do agree Adobe's shooting themselves in the foot here. There are loads of legitimate reasons to use images of real currency in areas such as advertising and (probably making this development scary) journalism.
currency wants to be free.
What about parody notes with people's faces on them, and other legal (outsize, single-side, or partial) variants? How close does something have to be to US currency to trigger the rule?
My Hp Deskjet 6127 has the same -feature- it will not print out euro notes, it stops halfway and prints our some anti piracy URL.
One World, One Web, One Program - Microsoft Promotional Ad Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer - Adolf Hitler
how do they expect us to afford their software?
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
It started back in the 80's on Madonna's "Lucky Star" video.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
not real bills. A moment of critical thinking would probably tell you why.
Well, we already all know that Linux is merely a tool used to pirate CDs and steal jobs from Microsoft, its only a matter of time before the Finnish communists start using it for printing money as well. How much longer can we allow this to continue? When will the madness end?
I agree 100% that said: i use gimp 99 times out of 100 photoshop is the other 1%
- Andy Fitzsimon
I am not a huge fan of Adobe telling me what I can and can't photoshop. What are they gonna do, have a 99USD "American currency" expansion pack? The software should scan things, not tell you whether or not you can scan them. What is next, copyright watermarks that make it so you can't scan magazines, or a 'pornography' filter?
I hate sigs.
US Bank notes are allowed to be copied as long as they follow some criteria:
1) the image must be more than 150% of the size of the original or less than 75% of the original
2) a note can only be copied on one side
So that Adobe has taken it upon themselves to do this isn't very good. It's almost like having a defective product.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
So I guess we cannot make artwork with American Currency anymore? What a crock. Guilty until proven innocent I guess. The new American way.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
No Wonder Photoshop CS Seems Slow - It's Analiyzing Images For Content!
Brian NoSpam - 10:02am Jan 7, 2004 Pacific
We received a TIFF image from a customer, of a $20 bill. The image does
*not* violate any laws regarding reproduction of currency (it's not even
close to actual-size, and it's not a "flat" portrayal - it's wavy, as if
it's fluttering in the wind. Nor is it real-color.
However, Photoshop CS refuses to open the image, and provides an error
message regarding the (il)legality of currency reproduction and an
"information" button that takes you to the web. (Photoshop 7, of course,
has no such qualms).
What the hell is this? In my book this is completely unacceptable -
Photoshop is an image editor, not a censor, government policy enforcer
or anything else.
Adobe, you've got some explaining to do.
Brian
I work at an large investment bank, doing graphics. Guess what one of the analysts' favorite images is? The final designs never are confused with the real thing (although there is occasionally the guy who wants something modified for an internal joke). For one thing, we almost always end up using small portions of bills in collages, and they are printed off-color and off-size to avoid snagging on the fair-use copyright law.
But we still have to start from the base root-of-all-evil image. And using portions of the bills means scanning them in at higher resolution as the fragments are used larger than normal. I just tried pasting the image somebody posted into a new copy of Mac version of Photoshop CS (this jpeg has "specimen" written on it twice). PS CS pops up dialog: "This application does not support the unauthorized processing of banknote images."
Can we still copy little fragments? How about taking high-res photos and pasting in? Our department haw always used common sense regarding fair use and never had a problem; we do high-volume output, and don't have time to screw around with this stuff. Thanks for making our life harder, Adobe! You just lost one upgrade sale, because I will make sure we keep a copy of PS 7 specifically to circumvent this hassle.
Has anyone tried running the new bill through a 2 d fft spectrum analyzer (FFTPro?) process. It might be interesting to see what, if anything new is there. -- Geccie
One user posted that this image wont open in Photosop CS. And while it won't, it dose open in Adobe Image Ready 8, which comes with Photosop CS. All you do is open the image in Image Ready, then hit Open In Photoshop (bottom of menu) or (Shift + Ctrl + M). Bingo, banknote in photoshop. Sorry if this has already been posted.
I just tried it with the latest version of Paint Shop Pro and it does the same thing, whether opening the image as a file or attempting to paste it into an existing image:
:)
"This application does not support the unauthorized processing of banknote images."
It includes this interesting link as well. As a geek, my immediate response was "how does this work??"
Since when did corporations become people!?
GrimRC
pretty trivial to add signatures of common currency to their already existing routines.
Well, this makes it pretty clear that there's a niche market that could be served here. Simply need to come up with a Photoshop clone that doesn't discriminate against counterfitters. And man, I bet they'd be willing to pay a lot for that. Cash, under the table. Excellent!
I don't want to feel left out, what if I wanted to use photoshop to make some fake Canadian money? :D
I have a good friend who recently shopped around some television scripts. As a joke, he wanted to include a fake $20 with each script. We tried my ancient, clunky parallel Plustek scanner first, through GIMP, which worked fine at ultra-low res but crapped itself at anything higher. That said, obviously GIMP had no problems with toilet paper (aka Canadian money).
Kinko's won't let you scan and print money. Never mind that real counterfeiters wouldn't fuck around with a pansy little copy machine at the local corner shop, and anyone who works in retail has probably seen a real counterfeit*+. Nevertheless, the poor guy had to break down, go there, and practically demand his obviously fake copies after the attendants got scared.
First thing, I think it's time for me to get a USB scanner. Second thing, if I'm going to be stupid and commit an illegal act, a little thing like new money-detecting code won't stop me. As others have said, I'll either go to an older version of the same software, which apparently works fine for millions of people, or find software that lets me do similar things without the code.
I predict that this won't do anything but tick off legitimate users. Counterfeiters will just laugh and get around this restriction.
* Yes, I said "real counterfeiters". Har har har.
+ If you've worked in retail and never seen a counterfeit bill, you're either lucky, or didn't check those $50s, $100s, and even $20s close enough. The store I work at caught a couple last year, some really obvious, some damn near perfect but for watermarks.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
But I only copy banknotes for backups!
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This one is specific to US bills and this one is the parent site.
Here's a fun test to try:
1. Cut the image up into squares below the blocking threshold.
2. Re-assemble in random order.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Disassemble the app, find the "find the currency" algorithm, force it to noop or branch always around the check,and you are done. Yep, if you know assembly, the world is your oyster.
Or do they think that crackers don't exist?
This isn't going to stop REAL counterfeiters, this is just going to raise the bar for entry.
In my mind, that's not a bad idea. Considering that if you print up dollar bills with your face on it and say "vote for me!" for a middle-school student election will get the FBI on you *, this may be a good thing. It will stop average joes from getting hassled by the FBI and wasting the FBI's time.
*-actually, the link is about an Econ project, not about an election. Still, its pretty funny in that "our country is going down the tubes!" way.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
And in a related story, slashdot started filtering out posts that have "MOD PARENT UP!!!!!!!" in the title.
About 5 years ago one of our Canon color copiers had this restriction built in. IIRC that model would actually generate a page, but the rectangle represented by the currency was all black. Needless to say we wasted a bunch of toner trying various denominations of currency.
Unfortunately we didn't get smart enough to try masking the bills to see which *region* triggered the detection.
The warning printed on the copier mentions securities as well, although nobody had any stock or bond cerftificates to try it with.
This is a copy of a post on the Adobe forum, which is now slashdotted:
---
Markus G. Kuhn - 03:45am Jan 8, 2004 Pacific(#106 of 110)
How it works:
For those of you curious about how this algorithm detects a banknote, here is a slide of a short talk that I gave to our local research group soon after I discovered the "EURion Constellation" two years ago while experimenting with a new Xerox color photocopier and a 10 euro note:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/eurion.pdf
The algorithm looks in the blue channel of a color image for little circles and most likely examines the distance distribution encountered. I have discovered a small constellation of just five circles (a bit like Orion with the belt starts merged) that will be rejected by a Xerox color photocopier installed next door from here as a banknote. Black on white circles do not work.
These little yellow, green or orange 1 mm large circles have been on European banknotes for many years. I found them on German marks, British pounds and the euro notes. In the US, they showed up only very recently on the new 20$ bill. On some notes like the euro, the circles are blatantly obvious, whereas on others the artists carefully integrated them into their design. On the 20 pound note, they appear as "notes" in an unlikely short music score, in the old German 50 mark note, they are neatly embedded into the background pattern, and in the new 20 dollar bill, they are used as the 0 of all the yellow 20 number printed across the note. The constellation are probably detected by the fact that the squares of the distances of the circles are integer multiples of the smallest one.
I have later been told that this scheme was invented by Omron and that the circle patter also encodes the issuing bank.
I have had a similar experience with Illustrator. I had to embed some eps figures (complex math equations made from latex, with fonts embedded in the eps). Acrobat shows the pdf fine, but illustrator has a lot of problems.
Turns out that Illustrator doesn't want people to use unauthorized fonts. So, I copy the latex fonts to distiller directory and try to view the equations -- they are messed up, because latex shifts the fonts a bit (characters in the fonts) to accomodate other viewers, and that shifted font table is inside the eps. So, I get strange characters in the equations *after taking care of putting in the fonts at the right place*.
I believe in this case, the rule was, "thou shall not pirate fonts." Doesn't matter if the fonts are
20 yr old fonts in public domain.
Over simplified rules "thou shall not photocopy money" are similar in spirit to the Talebanesque rules like "thou shall not look at another woman's face". Duh, I may be the only doc around and if the woman has a tumor on her face (or other, more private parts), I should be able to see it to cure it.
S
When I see you skateboarding behind the Safeway listening to Linkin Park I'll be sure to watch out.
::coughing:: That's great.
Haaa... haha.
Well said.
Using the image linked in the post I'm replying to, I was able to paste into Imageready CS and then switch from Imageready to Photoshop CS with no problems. I'm using OS X. Interesting.
With all the whining about how horrible Adobe is for this, nobody mentions GIMP. Why?
Are you all so bigoted against GIMP and for Photoshop that you would ignore the obvious?
Did I mention I haven't slept this week?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I constantly find myself right clicking on an open window, hoping to find something useful in the context menu.
Sigh. (Although I do wish the GIMP guys would consider re-arranging how filters, transformation, and image adjust ment tools are found in the various menus. It's always a small adventure trying to find something that's not obviously a plugin or "tool")
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I hate Adobe's so-called "upgrades"
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
This is already evident due to the fact that they've released two different $20s in the last 6 years.
I speculate he Treasury Dept/SS discovered counterfeiters having a great deal of success using Photoshop in their operations. They must have approached Adobe and encouraged them to add a feature to deter any future use of their software in that fashion.
Adobe was probably trying to do the right thing. Or they didn't want a tangle with the US Treas. if this was the case.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The law actually varies by country, and I guess to play it safe Adobe decided to forbid any kind of reproduction. I guess these days when a software manufacturer is held liable for enabling illegality.... :(
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
In order to compensate purchasers of CS8 for the CPU cycles they've lost due to bank note detection, Adobe is offering a $200 rebate that can be applied towards a system upgrade. Contact Adobe. Proof of purchase required. -- Sat Tired
I was able to scan, save and open a 10 and 20 dollar bill no problem. Scanned at 300 and 1200 dpi without a hitch.
When does this kick in? I see nothing from preventing me in making Andrew Jackson bedsheets!
ALL YOUR PASTE ARE BELONG TO US
The official motto of Ralph Wiggum.
>dozens of other much better anti-counterfeiting measures on today's currency
Changing Photoshop to block currency images is a pretty weak measure, but it is one more obstacle for casual forgers and for semi-sophisticated ones.
The Mint has avoided the trap of depending on the strength of any one security measure by having many anti-forging techniques. Counterfeiters face obstacles every step of the way.
"Enough empty generalities!", you say. "Just how does this help?". It means that someone who's figured out how to defeat the dozens of better measures now has to learn to use the Gimp. Plus it blocks the script-kiddie types who'd otherwise be using color copiers.
It's like a six-foot fence in front of a minefield. Not decisive, but adds a little.
By the way, currency security is an interesting subject in itself. There's a spectrum of anti-forgery techniques. Many are full-disclosure, so that both cash business and counterfeiters know about them. Another set is used for more careful checks at banks. A few are done as security-through-obscurity, known only to a few people and meant to catch technically sophisticated forgers without inside knowledge.
The Mint has been doing information security for a long time, even before there were computers. They're worth studying.
Has anyone with PS 8 tried experimenting with it a little? What if you take a 20 and lay it on top of a black sheet of paper only exposing... say... 10% for starters. How much of the bill has to be exposed before the program rejects it? If you expose certain quadrants or parts of the bill, is there any one quadrant or section that causes it to be rejected? Perhaps one could zero in on the triggering machanism this way. If you can get away with scanning sections of the bill, couldn't you scan the bill in sections and reassemble a complete one?
Technically, promoting gambling encourages gambling. The fact that it's addictive to some doesn't mean that gambling is bad, only that it's bad for some.
That said, I agree with your other point - Adobe is free to add/remove whatever functionality they want. We're free to bitch about it as much as we want though, in the hopes that they change their mind and let us do what we want with it (within the law). We're also free to not upgrade from 7 to 8/CS, or to switch brand loyalty as soon as anything with features remotely resembling Photoshop's comes on the market.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
Why bother, the blank paper's worth more! :-P
Acutally, Canadian money did fairly well last year.
Canadian Dollar Historial Timeline
Loonie up 22% for 2003
It's now up to about 78 cents to the US Dollar.
I verified this, too.
But when I took a picture of a new $20 bill with a digital camera and opened the 2000x3000-pixel RAW camera file it opened just fine. Even saving the file from Photoshop as a jpeg and re-opening it worked. Odd.
If there's one man I don't want running after me, it's Alan Greenspan. I mean, sure a slow trot would kill the man, but I'd be scared shitless from that Metamucil smell. ...then again that's what Metamucil's supposed to do, right?
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
A squid eating dough in a polyethelene bag is Fast N Bulbous--got me?
If you got me, email thisiswherejunkgoes@hotmail.com
Just another form of censorship. Why can't I use the program to edit a pic of Euro note? Just as if I have the intention to use the software to make money... Medieval, evil, etc, etc. Man used to be innocent until proven guilty...
hmm... used to see plastic S$50 bills around here but somehow they quit it. no idea why.
:P
anyway, if PS detects banknote-like features, would that mean that we can't use it to create "safer" vouchers and coupons that are tougher to xerox? or maybe there will be a PhotoshopPro?
For Hallowe'en last year (2003), I decided to dress up as a sort of 'Corporate Shill'. I put a suit on, and stuck a straightened coat hanger down my back. The idea was that i was going to hang a $20 from the end of the coat hanger, so it would dangle in front of my face.
I scanned a Canadian $20 bill at 300 dpi in Photoshop 7. It opened fine. So I hit 'Print'.
Halfway through printing, it stopped, and spit out the paper. I picked it up, and where the image stopped there was a URL. I can't remember exactly what the URL was, but when I typed it in, it took me to a website that listed international currency-copying laws.
I tried printing the back, the front, forwards, backwards, yet everytime there was a recognition that it was money. Finally, i reduced the dpi to 72 and it printed completely.
I agree. I hardly need to do any graphics editing(I'm not graphically inclined either so I don't create my own) and I've found the Gimp to be a pain in the ass to do simple things but I guess they aren't developing with people like myself in mind.
That I never upgraded my pirated Photoshop 5.5. Whew! Glad I didn't have to waste all that time downloading CS. Does Adobe think my time is valueless? These guys need to get a clue.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Well suppose you're printing up a protest against the government under your free speech rights to hand out on the street, or post on telephone polls. This allows it to be traced right back to the printer used. Try and tell me that doesn't chill dissent.
I opened a very detailed image of a 50 dollar bill yesterday to create this for a fark photoshop contest. It didn't stop me from opening the much larger picture of the 50 and copying it into the jobs/mayer picture. I used PhotoshopCS. Guess this story is bogus.
Somebody with lots of experience with various graphics software could sit down and write a thorough description of ideal user interface, and write a description of how the existing Gimp menus should be reshuffled to the ideal form and what's the reason for every change. The biggest problem in programming is to figure out what the users want; this way the requested changes should be easy to implement.
Why don't *you* consider how you would like the menus and tools arranged, and send a nice, polite email to the GIMP development team (perhaps with some mockups, or code) explaining to them how GIMP would be better with your menu layout.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Just aquire a copier illegally, or buy it a pawn shop.
Have a repair tech who knows the codes.
Hummmm.
If I was Mafia/Al Qaeda this would be a problem how?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Makes you wonder what else their application does when you try to scan a $20. Does it send a little notification to the feds? If it knows what you're scanning, and it's taking steps to prevent you from doing so, what's to say your name didn't just get added to some list somewhere?
Your example made me thinking about legitimate uses for currency scan photoshopping. Numismatics. There are countless sites like ATSnotes that post scans of banknotes. Certainly there are cases when you need to open Photoshop to clean the scan, adjust the colours, etc. Apparently, Adobe felt that they have the authority on what activities are permissible. I fucking hate them. The only thing that prevents me from boycotting Adobe is the fact that I use pirated versions of their soft anyway and don't actually use Photoshop (PhotoImpact more pleasant to use.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I do hundreds of scans a month, and this still happens. It's annoying, but I haven't found a time when PS won't let me manipulate the image.
Concerning the performance, it looks like the standards for the initial (C) are much lower than the 'real' Digimark watermark detection, which would explain the false positives, and lead me to believe that you're not taking *too* much of a hit when initially opening the image.
Concerning the money check - Any checking is annoying and unacceptable as it assumes you are a criminal. Counterfeiters will *absoulutely* be able to get around this. Photoshop 7 doesn't check for this AFAIK, and that will run on a G5. All Adobe has done is inconvience users, assume that they are all criminals, hurt the performance of their product, and taken it upon themseves to police what their customers scan.
Taken to extremes, will Adobe build in Child Pornography checking? Or scan your hard drives for incriminating pictures or files? Where doess it end? And why is something I buy for editing images checking and deciding what I can do with it?
At least, this could open Adobe up to legal problems - if their checks fail and someone is 'allowed' to do what should have been 'prevented'.
All in all, it sucks. If I wanted a currency checker, I'd buy a 12 dollar pen.
my old mans a bank manager, and regularly gets handed forgeries. He can pick the forgery from 20 other notes with his eyes closed, the _feel_ of the paper is always different, without even worrying about what it actually looks like.
Interesting. I went and scanned a used bill at 300 dpi on another machine with a $3,000 Epson scanner and it opened right up in CS on this machine. But, your linked image did not open, not even as a screenshot. I work for a textbook company and we have photo CDs of bills that we use in our Math books. Those images also opened up fine.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Why do I suddenly feel like adding these "constellations" to every image (not currency) that I have?
To use, start Adobe CS by taking off the cap. Then simply mark a small line on U.S. currency. If the mark is amber, the bill is genuine. If the mark is dark, the bill is suspect. To maintain the effectiveness of Adobe CS, replace cap immediately after each use.
Please note: If you are using Adobe CS to check your counterfeit bills for accuracy, please replace the cap and turn yourself in to your local Secret Service office.
At 4.95, Adobe CS won't last long! Special bulk discounts are available on large purchases of Adobe CS!
That's insane... But thanks to that story I will remember to check out if my new scanner will work with dollars and euros before buying it. Same for any new printers. I may not be a counterfeiter, but I want to have freedom to print fake money if/when I need/want it.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
But I can almost never find the bunny...
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
Who has the right to decide what kind of image I view/edit?
Nobody, but Adobe has the right to decide what kind of image you view/edit with Photoshop CS. It's their product.
How you decided your "right" to do something was being challenged, I have no idea. This is a commercial product they own, not a Bill of Rights.
"Sufferin' succotash."
This actually isn't censorship. It is absurd as saying a program with a security feature that lets people encrypt data so that you cannot read it is censorship. A government mandating such rules is worse than a software company, since it is coersive. Furthermore, Adobe is not saying that you are not allowed to look at currency images. Rather, they are saying that they are not willing to sell you a program that lets you look at currency images. It is a subtle but very significant difference. Forcing them to make a program against their will in order to conform to your whim is more commonly known as "slavery".
Suppose Photoshop did block more benign things, like pr0n. You do not have to buy Photoshop. You can use other photo editing tools. And if there are no alternative programs then you are free to write your own photo editor if you are able to. No one has a right to photo editors, rather we have a right to pursue photo editors. Like you don't have a right to happiness, but rather the right to the pursuit of happiness. The right *to* other things is more commonly known as "looting". So in truth, no one is stopping you from looking at whatever you want to look at. You just may have to go through a little bit more effort to achieve what you want. There's no such thing as a free lunch. We must earn what we desire.
Now suppose that government stepped in and decided what you can and cannot see. Now you no longer can use other photo editors nor can you write your own. Souind familiar? This is the mentality that caused the DMCA to come into being. Now *that* is actual censorship!
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
You can click the tear-off line in each "popup-dialog" and it will float there on the screen. That way you can do shortcuts to those dialogs.
You can also make shortcuts by just highlighting the function with the mouse and pressing the hotkey combo.
When you've done thinking try to actually see the tutorial or manual... :)
1) Open image of currency to be manipulated in M$ Paint.
2) Cut.
3) Paste into existing properly-sized image in PS.
4) Manipulate.
5) Print out 500,000 copies.
LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. A. Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Damn, mine ran out again.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I also ran into the block when trying to paste the jpg (also, thanks). Cutting and pasting the image by using long thin strips worked best, so as not to get a full image of any remarkable feature of the bill. What's interesting to note (no pun intended... :( is that once the bill is fully pasted into Photoshop, you can then save it as a PSD and re-open it in Photoshop with no problems.
Working along the same lines, (using Mac OSX) I then pasted the jpg into Preview and exported to a Photoshop document. It opened with no problem! It seems almost as if Photoshop just doesn't trust any "unreliable" source of image input.
==========
support the arts!
www.smadness.com
All British money is (C) Copyright Bank of England so you're not allowed to copy it.c kshire/3378445.stm might interest folks who are tempted to try this with Euros in Greece.
That's before you've arrived in court for counterfeiting money.
This story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwi
ya...because before people were using photoshop to make the currency they used to buy photoshop, which they used to make the currency they used to buy photoshop, which they used to make the currency to they used to buy photoshop....
*boggle*
OK, I know this is the wrong place for this, but am I the only one that thinks a "New Folder" button on an "Open File" dialog is completely wrong?
-- johnmc.
We're starting to see more and more software that won't allow you to do "X" because someone thinks it's naughty. We stand at the beginning of a new age as products become "smarter".
Oh, for crying out loud. Get off your revolutionary soapbox. Photoshop CS doesn't like if you scan money. Big deal.
The political thinking and attitudes that we develop now about products that are "good guys" preventing us from committing crimes will be with us for some time. Would you like automobiles that do not allow you to speed? How about a hammer that refuses to break windows?
As usual, Slashbots try to ascribe everything to some sort of "trend." It's always, "What next? What next?!" Get your head out of your cloud of anti-corporate paranoia and recognize that--horror of horrors--Photoshop CS, just like most scanners, copiers, and printers, won't let you illegally scan money.
I guarantee we won't see hammers that won't break windows or automobiles that refuse to speed. And this thing wasn't even an issue until Slashdot posted about it today. Suddenly, it's some big problem. Yeah, real big problem if nobody even noticed or cared beforehand. This story will pass off the front page and be forgotten, as usual, when everyone latches onto the next Microsoft article and bitches about that instead.
"Sufferin' succotash."
...six-foot fences were installed all over the country, including some across the road, some blocking entrances to schools, hospitals and mall, some in your backyard and one unlucky fellow got a six-foot fence across his bed...
I don't know about him, but if it were me, I'd treat the six foot fence in my bed like the six foot fence across the road, and just drive dright through it! Might take a few thrusts, though.
(obRealGenius:)
Chris Knight: So, if there's anything I can do for you, or, more to the point, to you, you just let me know.
Susan: Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?
Chris Knight: Not right now.
Susan: A girl's gotta have her standards.
Carthago delenda est!
Please learn how not to use runon sentences, they are annoying and distracting and make people wonder about your education, thank you for your attention, have a nice day, goodbye.
What if a porn actor/actress were to get a tattoo that contained the currency watermark -- that little 5 dot pattern? Hmm.. that would be dumb.
No... here's something dumb/ingenious: I've heard that some places are passing laws that require digital cameras to make a loud noise when taking a picture. This is in order to discourage sneaky perverts from taking a picture of you and then going home and jerking off to it, I guess. What about that guy at the bottom of the escalator, talking on his cellphone? Is he actually taking upskirt photos and then putting them on his website? People are apparently concerned about this enough that they are pressuring governments to do something about it, hence the "cameras must make a noise" legislation.
But someone might be peeking up your skirt with a "legacy camera" that doesn't make noise, and you would never know.
What is a modest girl to do? Wear currency watermark panties! Delightful little panties, covered with the five-dot "constellation" pattern. It seems only proper. Why, the only girls who don't wear our brand of panties, must be naughty exhibitionist immoral girls.
Do you want your daughter to wear plain white panties? I don't think so. Fortunately, I'm here to help you.
I'll make millions.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Photocopiers and most scanners etc. look for 1mm sized circles on the banknote. All Euro notes have them; not sure about the US$, but I think they have them too. On a Euro note (I have checked the 100, 50, 20 and 10 notes) the circles are yellow on all but the 10 note and are located on both sides in the middle of the note.
tom.
-- Tom
Just for fun, I just scanned the new USD 10 and USD 100 notes on my scanner @ 1200 dpi into PS CS and open both the file without problem.
This also works for Panamanian money.
(Rimshot... laughter from a few... moderately interested nods from some... silence from most)
The joke here is that Panama doesn't have money. They use US currency. With the canal having been built by the US and run by the US for many years (from 1914 until 12/31/1999), and with many thousands of US military personnel, civilian employees, and dependents in that very small country, they never had the need for their own money. Of course, now that US presence has REALLY taken a downturn, so they probably need to come up with some currency.
RP
So, I have Adobe Creative Suite installed. I read this story at work and decide to try it out.
I bring out a $5 bill in my wallet and stick it in our HP Scanjet 3570c and get a nice, high-resolution TIFF file. I save it, open it up in Photoshop CS--nothing. It opens just fine.
I save a copy of it to another file--nothing happens. It saves it and opens the other file.
I'm resizing to normal dollar bill size, rotating, and trying all these other things, but I can't get Photoshop CS to warn me and prevent me from doing any of it.
Has anyone else OTHER than this guy being quoted on a web forum actually tried this and had it happen to them? It's not happening for me. A non-story being blown out of proportion?
"Sufferin' succotash."
For those who don't know, it's based on a guy who ran away from home as a teen (17?) and who conned himself through a number of successful fake identities and learned to pass all sorts of fake checks. Eventually he was caught and imprisoned, but was later let out to to join the FBI's team that chases people forging checks.
The real Frank Abagnale Jr. is now a consultant who makes millions helping banks and gov't in this area, partly by helping them design anti-counterfeiting measures for checks and currency.
FWIW, if you get this movie, be sure to get the DVD that has the bonus 2nd DVD included. It has a number of additional sections that interview the real Frank Abagnale Jr.. Interesting stuff and a great movie too!
That's rather the same logic that banned DeCSS for so long. "We don't want people copying these things, so lets get rid of their ability to do something (almost) completely unrelated to copying these things." Photoshop is irrelevant to copying money unless you want to do something legal, like change its size. If you just want to copy it, scan it into a nice, uncompressed bitmap and send it to the printer.
Sure, you could use Photoshop in the process of copying money, just like you could bypass a DVD's region code before doing a bit by bit copy of the DVD, but you'd just be making more work for yourself and not accomplishing much.
I think the most striking thing that this has done is that it has now created a copy-protection scheme that anybody can use to prevent other people from editing/using/printing their images. Forget watermarks, which only have limited support in a very few select programs... as detection for this becomes ubiquitous in electronic publishing devices and software, what is to stop anybody from using it wherever and for whatever reason they like?
All it takes is someone to reduce the pattern to it's minimum allowable component to be detected and distribute the pattern for anybody to include in their images.
I really expect this is going to be massively abused.
I think they should give the users an opportunity to follow the law. There are many valid and legal uses for manipulating currency in a graphics editing program. It seems like Adobe, of all companies, would realize that.
And with JASC doing it also, it kind of sounds like a government requested thing, which is not leaving the best taste in my mouth.
RP
Just do a search for "money" at gettyimages and see how many stock photos come up and how diversely creative they are. I'm a graphic designer and one of my clients is a bank. I have done many posters, billboards, brochures, etc with various images of $100's or $20's or just big stacks of cash. I even once scanned a $1 bill and used the border for a coupon I designed. The printer even printed several thousand with green ink at actual size. It was only a one side print job with other text in the center and was obviously not real currency.
This also stops you from printing coins. After failing to scan a dollar bill, I attempted to use four quarters instead. This failed about 50 cents in, so I tried to use nickels instead. I managed to scan 65 cents in this time, probably because some of the coins were more worn, but it still failed.
Fortunately, it seems to be possible to use multiple types of coins to form a complete dollar, and even at higher resolutions! Unfortunately, most tellers will not accept coins made out of paper, no matter what the DPI resolution is. The consistency of metal has proven very difficult to replicate with paper, even laser jet paper.
As a final attempt to copy money, I wrote myself a check for $1, endorsed it, and attempted to scan it in. Unfortunately, I had previously printed my own checks using PS 6 with a "dollar bill" background image, and while there was some banding on the left side (I was running low on ink ad obviously couldn't afford to buy a new cartridge), Photoshop CS will not allow me to scan in these checks. I'll be ordering a new book of checks with the "Standard Blue" design from my bank; however this costs nearly $16 and I need to print up some money to buy these checks first.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
If the law says "thou shalt not make a product that can copy money", then Adobe would be exhibiting gross negligence (at the very least) if their product was in fact able to produce lifelike copies of money.
The law says you can't kill people. But we still have guns. Obviously gun makrs are exhibiting gross negligence by making such deadly products. And knife makers. And spoon makers. And car makers. And everything else.
But that's not what he said (and I can't believe someone modded it up without reading what the previous poster said, even though it was quoted right there.)
I'll state it differently, just in case you missunderstood what the previous poster said: If the law says you can't make a product that can copy money, that's the law. If the law says you can't kill, then nothing prevents you from making a product that can kill. You miss the difference - one covers the product directly (can't make something that copies money), the other covers potential uses (can't kill). VERY different situations.
Read. Think. Post. While it's not always the way people do it, it helps a lot ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Here is what the treasury department says you can do with photocopies of money. I have a firend who runs a group of businesses out here and makes fake money with his companies logo on it (yes.. cough* cheesy, but if you understood the mind of our tourists) and it falls within legal terms. This seems like it may actually prevent people from doing legal things, for instance with advertisments.
Photographic or other likenesses of other United States obligations and securities and foreign currencies are permissible for any non-fraudulent purpose, provided the items are reproduced in black and white and are less than three-quarters or greater than one-and-one-half times the size, in linear dimension, of any part of the original item being reproduced. Negatives and plates used in making the likenesses must be destroyed after their use for the purpose for which they were made. This policy permits the use of currency reproductions in commercial advertisements, provided they conform to the size and color restrictions.
Granted: It is illegal to drive over the speed limit, but do you see car manufacturers installing speed governors on their vehicles?
I just tried to scan a $20 with Photoshop CS. It craps out at the scanning screen, saying it's illegal to scan in money.
Yet, it loaded in the same image that was scanned in Photoshop 7 just fine.
Yes, I'm an Anonymous Coward, call me lazy.
Odd.....I just scanned a $10 (one of the new $10s)
with Paintshop pro 8.1, opened it with Photoshop cs/8 just fine.... admitiedly the bill was slightly rinkled and was in the scanner at an angle....but...none the less....i have a poster size scan of a $10 now...viewable with Photoshop 8...
And what makes anyone thing only American currency is counterfeited? Second, in fairness, if you prevent copying of one country's currency, you should have to prevent it for ALL countries' currency. Imagine the performance penalty if it scans each and every image for each and every variety of currency worldwide, not to mention the patch management for countries that redesign their money altogether too regularly.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
1) If the law says "thou shalt not make a product that can copy money"...
2) The law says you can't kill people. But we still have guns...
These arguments are NOT equivalent. The law does not say you can't make a PRODUCT that can kill people. The gun argument is equivalent to "thou shall not USE a product to copy money."
Actually, you CAN kill people under certain conditions & and on purpose, i.e. self defense, etc.
just an observation
Will the felt tip pen method work with this as well (like the CD's). After all the Algorithm reportedly checks for a group of circles, once you discover where those are, can you alter them in a way to defeat the protection? After all money is still good, even after somebody has written on it.
You know, you could just bypass the computer completely and draw it by hand, like this guy.
Another link and a documentary about Boggs.
haha
already been done!
With the DMCA and George's PATRIOT act you're all just a bunch of sheep
Love,
BC
what If I need to replace some tattered monopoly money?
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
What kind of Trojan is this that won't go away after a fucking format?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I'm guessing (hoping) that the detection mechanism relies on some optical property of banknote paper, rather than simple recognition of features on the bill's surface. For instance, maybe it's able to detect microprinting or those little colored threads embedded in the paper.
If we can find out specifically what property causes Photoshop to recognize a bill, we can add that property into all of our images, thereby rendering them unopenable in Photoshop! The sinister and nefarious open-source bandits could write a worm that, after infecting a machine, would alter every image file on the system so that it was unopenable. Photoshop would become a useless application, and The GIMP would reign supreme!
All very clever, but it's very reliant on "security by obscurity". After all, magazines don't like being photocopied either, right? So what's to stop them from placing the same pattern discreetly on the background of their pages? Suddenly *wham* the magazine can't be scanned, photocopied, and so on. Repeat as required with newspapers, books, corporate logos and anything else they'd like to protect.
Another idea would be to print this design onto a t-shirt and hang out in the background at events, trying to get into the press photos. Suddenly a whole bunch of editors will find they can't edit (or even view) their news photos in Photoshop because they contain currency!
It would be very easy, now this is out in the open, to get these five small circles everywhere. Which would effectively destroy this particular anti-copying device - or roll duplication back into the stone age, one or the other.
Now how will I make my George W $87 billion dollar bill?
A couple of years ago I tried to scan in an Olan Mills family photograph and the Photoshop said that the photo was protected and I could not scan in the complete picture or open the file.
If I see another of your posts using 'praps' as opposed to 'perhaps' I am seriously going to fucking shoot somebody. That usage is almost as irritating as emote-icons and substituting alternate symbols in words.
Perhaps your post subject should read 'The problem? Censorship!'. I don't know; I could be wrong.
ps. Nothing personal is being implied by this post. I am just mentioning some of my pet peeves in order to make myself feel more important.
5,845,008 : Image processing device and method for identifying an input image, and copier scanner and printer including same
6,014,453 : Counterfeit detecting method and device to generate counterfeit probability data and apparatus employing same
6,289,125 : Image processing device and method for indentifying an input image, and copier scanner and printer including same
Anybody with more time on their hands are welcome to search further.
BenKx
There was an article a while back (a few years ago, actually) that discussed printer manufacturers adding detection routines to add a watermark/not print U.S. currency. I believe HP was adding them to their high end color laser printer line. Does anyone know if this ever happened, or have more information on it?
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
So what? That;s the beauty of older software. I bet PS6 doesn't have this feature
Heh heh try writing some script-fu sometime and you will appreciate the simplicity and ease of use of GIMP's gui :)
I should sell my copy of Photoshop 7 as a counterfeiting tool on eBay!
What if I just, for curiosity's sake, want to look at my nation's currency up close? I should be able to to do that, just from a intellectual point of view.
Yet this scheme prevents such a thing, and since it's just the tip of the iceberg, how long will it be until they make polarizing magnifying glasses that turn black if I look at currency with them?
More big government adding a slight nuiscance to everyone, to "protect" us from the one or two chimps in several millions primates that are actually up to something shady.
This might be trivial, but how long until we are wearing DRM helmets that limit access to air, water and food unless we have "the right" to access it?
Only the Carly Fiorinas of the world will have "earned" the right to go without their DRM helmet for an hour or two a day, having earned the reward by making so much money for their shareholders...
I just read that it's only able to detect the new US $20, something about a pattern in the blue channel.
what if I wanted to scan a dollar bill with the intent of changing the portait to include my face and changing the scene on the back to include me fishing (of course, changing the "Legal tender" to "Art" or something different)
It's probably better if they made it so if someone tried to print it without first modifying it (and making it unofficial), that it would print the words "Not Legal Tender" or something similar.
Though I'm still against the whole idea of a digital, automated spy and this current method will most likely annoy customers and force them to look for alternatives (or for someone to find a "workaround").
Checking out one of the links from another post (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/eurion.pdf). You can open up this pdf in Photoshop 8 (Photoshop will rasterize it and display it fine), but once you save it as a tiff from Acrobat, and reopen it in Photoshop, it restricts you. Incidently, a copy saved as a jpg works fine in Acrobat.
1. No copier will allow you to print currency - you get the black box the first time you try. If you keep trying, the copier becomes less selective as to what it puts a black box over, up to the shutdown point.
2. While the unlock code could very well be static, it's more likely that it is a challenge/response hash - the copier gives the tech a random code, the tech then calls it into the manufacturer who gives the tech the corresponding unlock code. I do remember the tech calling in to his office during the service call, but I wasn't listening in.
After reading all of this, I tried scanning some American currency using my Epson 2450 Photo, at 300, 1200, and 2400 res, imported via TWAIN to PS CS.
I was able to edit these images with no problem - I scanned both front and backs of the currency.
I saved these out as uncompressed TIF at full res. Closed PS CS. Opened PS CS and brought in the images. NO PROBLEM AND NO ERROR MESSAGE WAS FOUND.
I was then able to print these images to my HP Photosmart 7960 with no problem whatsoever.
I don't know what you all are smoking, but Photoshop CS has no problems with American currency in this shop.
A self-respecting one, obviously.
well i don't know about anyone else, but this story has inspired me to give counterfeiting a go!
see you in the pub! i'll be the one in the large top hat.
What? I still use Paint Shop Pro 4.11!
And the sharware version NEVER expires...no on day 1000-somthing of my 30 day trial period (on just one machine). Uh...good thing I can get the Gimp.
- Psi.Limit
Shouldn't it just prohibit Photoshop CS from printing the bills, within the 75% - 125 % range ? What if you would like to do any artistic impression involving dollarbills...
Why do the machines have to commit suicide?
Wouldn't blocking the copy attempt be enough?
Having a machine fail and not restart is extreme. Makes a great denial of service attack, go to a library, (try to) copy a bill, and destroy the machine.
Do all the copy machines with this technology commit suicide, or do some of them just prevent the copy?
Even SCMS systems just block copies, they don't self-destruct.
Anything that intentionally stops working and won't do anything until it is "fixed" I count as self-destructing, even if the hardware is intact. A PC which wipes its own BIOS if I do something unacceptable would count.
What does the law require? Beyond requirements, are there any voluntary guidelines from the gov't? Any US Code, CFR, Federal Register, etc citations for blocking and/or self-destruct measures being required or suggested?
Cars have speed regulators, but they only cut fuel when you are trying to exceed the top speed, and reinstate it when you slow down. They don't trigger the engine to self-destruct. Yes, an ECM (electronic control module) can easily be made to destroy an engine and drivetrain. Full throttle, force transmission to neutral or first gear at high speed, or park or reverse when moving forward, extreme spark advance, run the engine "lean" and/or shut down the cooling fans and bypass the radiator. As far as I know, no car manufacturer has done such a thing.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
-nt-
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
This might stop the everyday person that wants to mess around with counterfeiting a $20 in Photoshop, but the real threat is in the mass counterfeiters with huge printing presses in countries such as Colombia, where counterfeiting is rampant. Plus, there's a million other image editing programs that one could use, so I really don't see the point.
Domain name registration for $8.79 per year
879domains.co
Basically, what I would like to see is, that when no gimp window is active, only the gimp toolbar and palettes are hidden (not any of the image windows), and when you first put a gimp window on another desktop, the latest desktop to contain a gimp window's window configuration will be on that new desktop. After that happens, the palette arrangements can be changed without affecting other "GIMP desktops"
The GIMP palettes and tool windows would close for that desktop when all of the images on that desktop are closed. But something clever would need to be devised for making sense for the Gimp main window to be open before the first file has been opened.
Just my two cents.
1)
Save this:
http://pbx.mine.nu/Series2004NoteFront.jpg
2) Right click, say Open With.. 'ImageReady'.
3) From ImageReady go File, Edit in Photoshop...
4) wow, wasn't that easy? DOH!
tel0p
That was so fucking terrible. You should be ashamed.
On the Bureau of Printing and Engraving's website, we can find information on Conterfeiting Laws and Reproduction of Currency.
While it's legal to make certain reproductions of currency, I think it's Adobe's right to write code however they want, and it's your right to purchase image manipulation software by other manufacturers. Adobe would be stepping into a messy legal area if the software reported the use of currency images.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Actually, the law explicitly ALLOWS you to use the image.. Just within certain restrictions.. It seems that ADOBE simply chose to go with more restrictive measures so it would accord with the law in other countries..
A guy walks into a gas station and asks the clerk, "Hey, you got change for an 11?" The clerk says, "Sure," takes the bill, and gives the guy a 7 and a 4.
Sometimes having worked in Govenrment and staying in the political loop has its benefits for me.. After a short discussion with the Secret Service Public Affairs office in Washington, DC, today I believe that I am safe in providing the following information. To quote from the US Secret Service website at : "The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided: 1. the illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated; 2. the illustration is one-sided; and 3. all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium,graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use." For those in other nations you may find links to your applicable regulations at: Which is also where the PhotoShop CS error and PaintShop Pro error take you automatically to. If you want to test this out yourself. I am posting a copy of a US Government currency exemplar published SPECIMEN version of the new 2004 series $20 note, as well as JPEG images of BOTH the PhotoShop CS and PaintShop Pro 8 error messages, for TECHNOLOGY and media information purposes ONLY.. ALL and ANY INDIVIDUALS who download this image are responsible for their own actions and agree that they shall use this image ONLY for the technology demonstration purposes intended AND that they will destroy the file after it is used to demonstrate said technology. Downloading the file is at your own risk, and I accept no responsibility for your actions, use, or possession of said file or its contents. The file is at: http://www.krebs2003.com/adobe%20test%20image.zip Beyond that, I can only say that when I did bring up the issue of how PhotoShop CS was dealing with the image, no-one at the Secret Service seemed surprised.. They seemed, not surprisingly, more interested in some workaround I had discovered, which I have promised NOT to discuss. ;-)
Keith
The problem does NOT only crop up when you go to print, the error messages are generated when you TRY to even OPEN the images.. It might be a good idea to read the thread BEFORE you post..
Their customer service number is 800-833-6687.
I called and apparently I'm the only one who has complained about this, at least according to the person I talked to on the other end of the phone.
They claimed it was justified because the government doesn't want people counterfeiting money, so they added the feature in. But aren't their other anti-counterfeiting measures in currency that do the job just fine, without this step?
I'm assuming that if they do this, then it's only a short step before they prohibit you from scanning things that have, oh, say a DRM watermark in it. The same kinds of argument can be made.
So give them a call and let them know how you feel about tools enforcing policy.
I go to buy the latest version of Photoshop with my phony money. ;-)
I vaguely remember an article of years ago about a spray made by Xreox(?) that you put on a document to make it uncopyable - under normal lighting it was clear, but under the bright light of a photocopier it went opaque. We now have a way to make images uncopyable - just include the "constellation" of 5 circles?
Just imagine what would happen if someone had it tattooed on their bottom at the next Christmas party - explain that to the copier repair man...
the circle patter also encodes the issuing bank
So it looks like the Euro notes may be possibly country encoded - just not so obviously.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
I've been in the photocopier business for 22 years. The last two generations of photocolor copiers, that we sell, have had "black boxes" that we no nothing about, no documentation in the schematics as to what they are. We were told in school, that these are to lock out any attempt to copy money, unless you are below 50% of the original size, or over 150% of original size. It is suppose to pop up a 1-800 number to call to unlock it, but to date, no one in our area has had to use it. No one is stupid enough to try to copy money. Afterall, the government dosen't like the competition LOL
Whenever you open an image photoshop loads that image into memory. To facilitate editing it collects information such as, Hue, Saturation, Histograms of the channels, contrast . . .(see the Image>Adjust[ments] menu). I downloaded your image and sure enough, pasting it into PS CS OS X brought up this alert window.
Since Adobe doesn't release any half decent contour tracing software(streamline hasn't been updated since the days of windows 95 and even then it was very crude) I was fairly certain it wasn't doing any kind of shape anaylasis. Using Illustrator 10 I shifted the color on the same image (using various blend modes from the transparency palette) and found that even minor hue shifts change the bill enough to be opened. Putting a 28% opaque color field in front of the bill changes it enough, and in my quick experimenting It doesn't seem to react adversely when I adjust it back to the correct range.Oddly the test I did that, to my eye changed the bill the most (think bright yellow and kelly green as opposed to peach and lime green) did
I don't have a good scanner in front of me now, but some variation on these tactics would probably work on hi res files, since the low res ones tripped up the alarm. I am curious about the millimeter diameter circles in the blue channel noted in another poster's comment though.
http://www.moneyfactory.com/newmoney/main.cfm/cur
(this is actually a US Govt website)
I've actually scanned a bill before. I ran across a bill with a message written on it in Arabic and put it online for a few friends to look at. (It said "I love you, Fatima!", or words to that effect.) Of course, I cropped and false colored it (to highlight the writing) first.
What I take issue with personally is the false representation of the program as an image editor an manipulator. If certain images can not be manipulated or even viewed, that information should be clearly and prominently located in the documentation and advertising for the product.
It is not.
Making a crippled product available is fine, but given that the product is represented as non-crippled, they should be liable for making that false representation.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
What makes you think that anyone would believe that anything you have to say is the truth?
Overly Critical Guy has yet to put forward a coherent or logical argument for his tired and continually discredited views. He surehates Slashdot, but he continues to post here!
check out deception dollar
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us." - Dostoevsky
YHBT.
YHL.
HAND.
I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet. But the currency detection scheme is somewhat sensitive to brightness. I took an image made it 74% brighter and Photoshop CS still flagged it. At 75% I was able to paste it in and with a little bit of brightness reduction here and a little bit of contrast addition there I got something close to the original image. I have no doubt, however that information was lost but I'm sure someone can come up with a lossless way of doing an operation prior to importing currency into CS and doing the inverse operation once they're in.
It's a non-issue until you print it anyhow. An image on paper might pass as a banknote under the right conditions; an image on harddrive or screen won't.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
All you have to do is bleach $1s.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actualy, fonts do not have copyright protection in the US. The actual data in the font file can be copyrighted but the actual images cannot be.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
well,
you might have other problems if you use a tattoo to avoid surveillance
With the DMCA and George's PATRIOT act you're all just a bunch of sheep
*Sigh* Talk about sheep!... you're proving yourself to be one of them, following along with others in their mindless anti-Bush rhetoric. Apparently it escaped your attention that ALL OF CONGRESS but ONE PERSON voted for "George's" Patriot Act. If the Patriot Act is bad, then don't blame Bush, blame EVERY ELECTED OFFICIAL in both the HOUSE and SENATE but ONE. It's bipartisan crap, not just Republican crap.
I'm no great Bush fan, but statements like that just annoy me.
Go wash your wool and stick to things you know something about, like Shepards and grazing.
D
Did I mention I haven't slept all week?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Try photocopying a 20 dollar bill with a new Xerox copier.
Secret Service worked with copier makers to have some built in hardware detection systems to pick up on somebody trying to copy cash, because of counterfeiting obviously.
This is probably the same buisness we are seeing here.
what if someone reversed the color and rotated the bill 90 degree's then mirrored it? or how about a million other photoshop filters? you could do half on one file and half in another perhaps. this is fucking stupid it's like searching everyones hand bags in an airport. If someone wants to get around it they will....
i could do whatever i wanted with that image with copy of photoshop
There goes some people's "upgrade path" for the next new version of photoshop.
Full disclosure: I also work at Adobe, on Photoshop, and am passing along this reply
c.f. Article at the Adobe User to User Forums website
Kevin Connor - 06:33pm Jan 8, 2004 Pacific (#269 of 319)
As someone at Adobe who was involved in the decision to include counterfeit deterrence in Photoshop CS, let me finally provide you with a response to all of these concerns and questions. Sorry for the delay!:
Photoshop CS does indeed include a counterfeit deterrence system (CDS) to prevent the illegal duplication of banknotes. The CDS was created by a consortium of central banks from around the world. We, along with other hardware and software manufacturers, have included CDS in our products at their request to address the threat posed by the use of digital technologies in the counterfeiting of banknotes. There are other software products from other companies that already use this same technology. There are also hardware products that use the same or similar technology. For example, most color copiers sold today will not allow you to copy currency.
As digital imaging technology advances, becoming more broadly available and user friendly, the old barriers to currency reproduction are becoming less effective. The unscrupulous are taking advantage of the functionality that is being provided to the vast majority of honest users for the purposes of counterfeiting currency. In the US and around the world, counterfeiting through digital means is increasing exponentially, and retailers and the general public--including our own customers--are at risk.
Counterfeit currency is essentially a hot potato. Whoever holds it last, loses. The person who loses isn't necessarily the counterfeiter. There's no government body in place to "reimburse" people who, through no fault of their own, get paid with currency that turns out to be counterfeit. In our implementation of CDS, we've worked very hard to balance the need to protect these unsuspecting victims of counterfeiting along with the need to continue to provide a product that efficiently does what honest customers need it to do.
There appear to be several major concerns and objections repeated throughout this message thread, so I'll try to address each one individually:
1. Performance: CDS does not cause any noticeable slowdown in Photoshop performance. During most operations performed in Photoshop, CDS is not used at all. When it is used, the performance impact often is just a fraction of a second.
2. Legal use of notes: It is true that the current implementation of CDS will prevent you from scanning in your own banknotes even if your usage intent is entirely within legal boundaries. Regulations for using banknote images vary by country. It is the responsibility of the central bank in each country to provide images that can be used within the legal guidelines of that country. In other words, if you want to legally reproduce images of the new $20US bills on a Web site or in a marketing brochure, you can contact the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing for legal images that can be opened and manipulated in Photoshop CS. (You can visit them at www.moneyfactory.com.) Similar solutions should be available in other countries. If you find that your central bank is not providing adequate support to permit legal uses of their banknote images, then you should let them know.
3. Adobe's intentions: Please be assured that this implementation of CDS is not a step down the road towards Adobe becoming "Big Brother." We know that one of the reasons people love Photoshop is because it's an incredibly flexible tool that can be used for so many different things. That's also one of the reasons we at Adobe enjoy working on new versions. Finding ways to prevent you from doing things in Photoshop really doesn't interest us! Moreover, the CDS is not Adobe technology, but was provided by the central banks, who would have no reason to want to restric
Still - the attempt is logged and the copy ruined.
Stupid Ass. Photoshop CS IS the full version of photoshop, just the NEW version.
I am afraid you don't quite understand the definition of totalitarian. A totalitarian state is the one where the government can control most of the people most of the time and then act accordingly. It doesn't have to prohibit all forms of free expression.
:) Pre-Glasnost Soviet Union is your only hit, but you must also realise that KPSS/KGB didn't have the technology in the 1980s that is available to the US (and other advanced countries) today.
Pre-war Iraq was not totalitarian. Secret police was actively preventing any organised political opposition, but it could not control most of the people. Afganistan is a total miss, the warlords did not control anything farther than a few kilometeres around and Taliban could only control what they saw (which wasn't much, because you need well equipped [thought] police). Just about any Islamic nation is a bad example as well. Mainland China used to be a somewhat totalitarian state, but you have to be damn good at controlling to do it in a country with 1 billion population.
You might be confusing totalitarian states (they see everything you do) with authoritarian states (the leader may do whatever he wants). But even then your examples are not correct, since China and USSR were not authoritarian.
As for the "idiots" you mention, their existence is permitted, because the government doesn't want to stop them yet, not because it cannot do that. There are many ways to make them shut up, simply drafting another little piece of legislation would do wonders. And if you believe that free expression is allowed in the States, just consider the groupthink menthality of your citizens and the corruption of your free media. Just think of how much opposition was in the mainstream media to attacks on Afganistan or Iraq. Not bloody much. Yes, it appeared later and it is allowed, but it is no longer a stretch of imagination to think that the media just might decide to support the government a little longer... And don't let me started on blatant lies, willfully perpetrated by media (because of which the average American now thinks that WMDs were found in Iraq and Saddam attacked WTC).
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Again, like DVD regional coding or uncopyable/unplayable-in-a-PC CDs it turns out that the pirated/hacked versions have *better* functionality than the company released versions.
So I want to buy product 'x' - "get the pirate coz I need those added functions." That's crazy thinkin'.
-j.
Like I'm going to see this with the unaided eye that this counterfit bill was only printed at 600dpi? I think not.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, I don't know what you can or can't see, but I can. I spent years staring at film and veloxes. My department considered ~900 dpi to be the point where the scan became essentially indistinguishable to the unaided eye from the the original line art. Do most people look at their money closely enough to notice? Heck, no. You could easily pass a 600 dpi bill. I've seen cashiers at a former employer accept $1 bills with corners from $20s taped on as twenties.
But in the context of my post, I was specifically referring to reproducing the micro text on modern US paper money - such as the line around the portrait on the $20, or the line under the portrait and the text inside the lower-left "10" on the $10. That feature was designed to aid in detecting counterfeits produced or printed on color laser copiers - by becoming illegible blobs when copied at low resolution.
Considering that I had prefaced my statement by saying, "If I were attempting to accurately reproduce currency..." I stand by my statement that for this purpose 600 dpi is low resolution.
What you claim to be able to see or not see is irrelevant. Considering that you didn't bother to proofread what is essentially a single line post, I suspect that there's quite a bit you don't notice.
Think about it. Say i'm making a kids program and one of the things is learning to count cash? Like Jump Start first grade does.
Where the hell am I going to get the images from?
I'm allowed UNDER THE FU(KING LAW to make images as long as there single sided.
Notice how these fu(king low lifes snuck this in?
Notice they don't say dick sh1t?
It's ok you say? What's next images of the government wasting your cash can no longer be copied? Bush scratching his butt?
Right On I say ! They can take there DRM crap and shove it up there @sses. This is just the start !
Time to speak out people ! If your not speaking out load and clear then your part of the problem.
Maybe the solution to the 419 scam is to flood the market with counterfeit Nigerian money. No, that doesn't make any sense. It would just make them more desperate for US Dollars.....
But maybe you could just create a fake picture of piles of money to send back to the people who spam us saying "No thanks, I already got millions in cold hard cash." Even fake videos. Or just use the pictues/videos that the Nigerian scammers send to marks back to them?
um.... never mind. I don't know what I was thinking.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
And I've spent 4 decades collecting coins, stamps, and paper money, which means I look at it all closely with interest. I also do photography, scanning, and large format printing, which means I pay a whole lot of attention to every single pixel.
And 99% of the world doesn't. Is it possible to produce a counterfeit bill that will fool an expert at 600dpi printing (which is a hell of a lot less in terms of true color cells)? Oh hell no! And not at 900dpi, and not at 1200dpi. But the average person doesn't put their bill on a high-resolution scanner and import it into Photoshop (pre-CS) just to get a good look at it once before deleting all the files. And they don't print a single-sided version long-ways on their 36" wide large format printer -- which exceeds by a properly sufficient margin the requirement to be at least 150% of actual size -- just to see what the new $100 looks like when printed really BIG. And yes that poster has real impact with most people. And most of all, they've never seen the microprint actually spell out words as part of the security mechanism on even one of their bills.
Yeah you can prove that you can't recreate all these features on current consumer-grade equipment (I was using better than consumer grade) and fool an expert. But the expert is not the person you have to fool. And that's why counterfeiters continue to succeed, often with stuff that is amazingly crappy.
As far as my proofreading goes, f*%#ing Slashdot needs to incorporate a spell checker in their posting mechanism. For a geeky site, that's a major deficiency.
Now I've got to go get another really big glass of tea if this pissing contest is going to continue.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Nope, because I essentially agree with everything you just said. I've never just been talking about what would work, other that pointing out that ~100 dpi wouldn't. I've been talking about how I would do it.
AND I apologize for the snarky proofreading comment. As was inevitable, of course, I made an editing error in my own post. And I agree with you on the integrated spell-checker.
Enjoy your tea.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/200401 10/ap_on_hi_te/copying_dollars_6
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Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
...but about alot of currencies. Actually the code is able to detect the majority of the mainstream currencies in use today e.g euros, pounds, yens. I tried to edit a pic of a euro and a rubel in pretty bad shape, the code recognized them anyway. There's an easy workaround tho, open the image in adobe imageready, and then send it to photoshop.
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I just tried scanning a US $50 bill into Photoshop CS. No problem at all. Saved it as PSD. Printed it. Still no warnings. Another silly Internet "urban legend" up the spout. Proves only one thing: people really will believe just about anything (without even checking).