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

How good is the detection?

[Siener]

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.

WORKAROUND

[Ex1le]

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!

Speed

[ZxCv]

...., 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.