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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.
'This application does not allow the unauthorized viewing of pornographic images...'
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!!
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.
And next week the govt labels GIMP as a tool for counterfeiting - evil open source terrorist tool etc... :)
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
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?"
...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.
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.
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.
What happens if I want to make a backup copy of a note that I have in my wallet? At least if my wallet is lost or stolen i will have a backup of the cash that was inside there!
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.
Maybe the government requested it?
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.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
This is interesting...and so typical of people looking a reason to get all flustered for the sake of just blustering against "Big Brother", et al....no matter how weak or baseless the reasons.
Security invasion? Privacy invasion? Where? This is not a case of Photoshop sending a report of your attempt to make a copy of currency, it's simply a step that Adobe is taking to try and help be one of the "good guys". I fail to see how you can claim that counterfeit efforts using cheap (comparitively), easily obtainable hardware and software is not a problem...especially when several news items have stated that this *is* in fact a rising problem. Literally less than a week ago I watched a story on the local news about convenience store owners being passed fake 20's that were only spotted when doing the daily books or readying the deposits. In a busy environment, the money duplication doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to pass a quick glance and feel like 1 of the 1000 some odd variations in currency texture from wear and tear (circulation). It clearly is a problem, and even if not epidemic, it is still a real and valid concern.
Yes, you can use GIMP or other programs to avoid this, yes there are far more sophisticated methods to making fake currency. Adobe has decided to take some form of action to do their part to not be a tool used for this.
Invasion of security and privacy? Again...where? Do you understand the meaning of these words?
I respect the decision made by Adobe, and refer to my original point...at this time, being that this only affects trying to copy currency, I see no legitimate complaint or impairment of functionality, or "invasion" of any kind.
Besides, on another level, if Adobe continues directing all of their attention towards preventing currency fraud, it means less effort on troublesome protection efforts that keep me from pirating their software.
oops...did I just type that?
Every run-of-the-mill grocery store I've been to recently has checked my 20 or 50 euro bills with a blacklight. The blacklight lamp has been placed so that when the clerk takes your bill he'd have to make an effort not to move it under the light.
The owls are not what they seem
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
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.
Let's see. What if I work for a large retailer and am tasked with creating an extensive presentation for the employees on the counterfit protections in the new currency. Yes, yes, they have pamphlets but my boss wants everyone well trained.
So I whip out my scanner and trusty photo shop, perhaps I can get some nice close-ups of those little protection.
This is rediculous to do. It won't stop the bad guys, they'll just use other software or and older version. However it can be really annoying for a legitimate user. BAAAH
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.
Well, there are most certainly legit uses for banknote pics.
Ever try to buy numismatic items online? You really need a pic, both for identification (the note with Timashev's name is worth way more than the one with Shipov's) and for checking quality
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
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.
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.
but I cannot see a single real scenario where this truly makes a problem for anyone
When I wanted to copy currency was when I was contructing a three dollar bill, and I was going to use other currency as a template.
One legit application I can think of for scanning currency would be for collectors who wish to archive their collection. At one point I had a 1986 Canadian $2.00 bill... near as I can tell they switched to a two and one dollar coin a long time ago. While you might consider this nutty... imagine stamp collectors. Legit enough hobby.
I wanted to show it to someone, who was a canadian, and did a scan, making sure I put on it in bold friendly letters "copy copy copy copy".
That reminds me, I do have some out of print currency I should take the time to scan. Unique images should be saved.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
.. 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
It's a tool that doesn't work right and that has arbitrary restrictions built into it that are not disclosed. What's next - looking for a little RIAA watermark in an image and refusing to work on those?
There's a typical argument trotted out of "there's no legitimate reason to do X therefore you shouldn't complain if you are prevented from doing X". Typically it just shows a lack of imagination for the person making the argument. There are many good reasons why I might want to work with an image of currency. My child might be writing a report for school about money. I might like to have pictures of money on my desktop. When my wife gave birth here in Japan we had to pay the hospital bill in cash. I have a picture of hundreds of 10,000 yen bills since I'll probably never have that much in cash in hand again. What's wrong with me taking that picture and using it?
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". 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?
They do. I work for a major manufacturer - all of our colur machines have this feature and will actually lock up, displaying an error code.
However - even if you managed to somehow work around this, there is still a way (which I will not disclose) to find out on what machine (manufacturer, model, serial number) a color copy was taken. Supposedly another legal requirement.
(And yes, I have seen it and does work...)
Have you heard about Woz and his sheet of $2 bills?. If you like carrying $2 bills, then consider going the whole hog and really getting to know the local law enforcement personel.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
2) 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.
I suspect very, very few people would ever realise that Photoshop was "crippled" in this way.
Yes, it does prevent many of them. Since you can't scan the bill, how do you ever get it to the point where you can change it to comply with the law?
Your other point, about not buying the product, is valid. However, if the information is not disclosed to you how can you make an informed decision?
You talk about a "group of people" telling a manufacturer that they cannot produce and sell a particular product. This is called advocacy. How does a manufacturer learn that it's products are not well received if no one is ever supposed to say anything? How will the market ever learn enough to avoid products that do bad things if no one brings the subject up? We have the right to say "this is bunk!" You have the right to ignore it and buy Photoshop if you like.
A month ago I was joking to the guy installing Xerox printer/copier in the office about printing some nice shiny notes for Xmas shopping. He said that it's no problem (it won't shut down) but instead it will put hidden markers based on serial number of the machine. It might be because where I live it's only illegal to pass the fake money as real...
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.