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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.
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
And next week the govt labels GIMP as a tool for counterfeiting - evil open source terrorist tool etc... :)
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.
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
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 ???
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...
...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?
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.
It also simultaneously emails the FBI so they can come and question you.... Vee have Vays of makking eue Taulk!
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.
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.
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.
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."
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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.
What does the program look for in the bill to decide it is one? Is it looking for seals, or layout of the bill or what? It might be interesting to see if this might be extended to other potential counterfitting items, like bonds or identifications. Or is it already, anyone know?
Oh my, I think Dave just turned into a bear.
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...
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))"
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
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.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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!
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.
% 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.
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.
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 $5!"
I am anarch of all I survey.
With 10 minutes work on the jpeg, it appears that there is no testing during the processing of the image, but SOLELY during the import operations (convert to ps internal format routine).
The import routine can be defeated with a 3degree shear of the original image - then the image can be sheared back in again.
But of course this isn't to stop counterfeiters and never was. It is to protect Adobe from new laws of responsibility.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
That's rediculous. The image you linked is nowhere near high enough resolution to be able to produce a fake.
Oh well, I guess now it's...
ALL YOUR PASTE ARE BELONG TO US
I have a website. It's about Macs.
For those of you curious about how this algorithm detects a banknote, here is a slide of a short talk that I gave to our local research group soon after I discovered the "EURion Constellation" two years ago while experimenting with a new Xerox color photocopier and a 10 euro note:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/eurion.pdf
The algorithm looks in the blue channel of a color image for little circles and most likely examines the distance distribution encountered. I have discovered a small constellation of just five circles (a bit like Orion with the belt starts merged) that will be rejected by a Xerox color photocopier installed next door from here as a banknote. Black on white circles do not work.
These little yellow, green or orange 1 mm large circles have been on European banknotes for many years. I found them on German marks, British pounds and the euro notes. In the US, they showed up only very recently on the new 20$ 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.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Because of the ubiquity of the dollar, you will find staff around the world whose job it is to monitor counterfeiting of the greeenback.
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.
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.
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.
It started back in the 80's on Madonna's "Lucky Star" video.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Thanks! Let me just print that out for future reference.
Hmm, seem to be having problems...
Xenu loves you!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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
>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.
Not only are you flat out wrong about what the law forbids, I feel compelled to offer up the idea that not all laws are Constitutional. Now I doubt anyone has attempted to beat a forgery rap on that basis, since the Constitution specifically discusses punishing counterfeiting-- but the way the law is written may well violate the First Amendment.
As a comparable situation, while it is illegal to hack into other computer systems, tools that may aid in the process are quite useful to those discussing computer security issues. Indeed, published exploits for certain vulnerabilities are the best way to communicate to everyone involved exactly what is needed to exploit the vulnerability... and as such provide a sort of unit test as developers attempt to close the hole.
So back to money... why shouldn't currency collectors be able to scan and print images of money? Why shouldn't those writing cash handling policies at retail establishments be allowed to use currency images in their chapter on detecting forgeries? What about an artist making a statement about greed? But that's why the law allows for reproduction under a wide range of circumstances and why I think it's lame that Adobe would just go ahead and do this. I guess it's time for me to go see if the GIMP has a Paypal donation button.
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.
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.
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.
Print your counterfeits on Crane's Crest Fluorescent Opaque White. Doesn't have the red/blue fibers, but the feel is almost identical. Print out your next batch of resumes on this paper. Your resume will stand out from the others because is "feels more valuable".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
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.
==========
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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*
...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!
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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