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.

Comments

Why?

[Beolach]

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.

The promlem? Censorship!

[Maresi]

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!

Re:The promlem? Censorship!

[EvanED]

On the contrary, I think a software company deciding is much better than a legislator or judge. At least in the former case, you can choose a different piece of software. In the latter you have to leave the country.

Re:The promlem? Censorship!

[andyt]

When they volunteered by their own free will? Unless you know of a law that forces Adobe to do this, this is simply Adobe being a responsible company. Don't like it? Buy something else.

That would be the plan, yes. Or use something free. *cough* GIMP *cough*

Re:The promlem? Censorship!

[Kent Recal]

*cough* PAIN*cough*ful *cough* UI *cough* from he*cough*ll.

I use gimp often when I don't want to wait/reboot for photoshop but every single time I do I find myself swearing and cursing at that clueless UI.

It feels as if their primary goal was to spread every bit of useful functionality over at least three different popup-dialogs each of which must be manually found and opened by the luser.

And I don't know of any project that'd be working to improve the situation.
I mean, someone repl^H^H^H^Hadd a GUI to it and it will be SO useful!

But no, everybody's too busy adding software alpha blending to kde (hell yea we needed that!) or building yet another browser.

Hm. I wonder how constant flaming affects my karma.

Re:Uhm.. So?

[velo_mike]

Am I the only one who doesnt see this as a huge problem? I could be missing something though.....

Guess it depends on what you're doing with it. I bet the marketing department of my first real job (a casino) would have problems with it - what else could you show in casino ads? I'd guess that banks, car dealers and especially those check cashing/usury lenders in the hood would like to do the same.

The problems are, the law defines how currency may and may not be reproduced and this goes beyond the law, it's not up to adobe to enforce the law, and since there are plenty of legitimate uses for photoshopping currency it's a crippled version that is apparently not disclosed anywhere external.

WTF are you on?

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.