Using Computers To Weed Out Art Fakes

jackelfish writes "Reminiscent of handwriting analysis software used in the television series CSI, computers are now being used to evaluate the authenticity of works of art without an expert ever setting eyes on it. The technique identifies the artist by analyzing their characteristic brush or pen strokes from high resolution scans of previously authenticated works. Much like a fingerprint, these characteristics can then be compared to a work in question. The method, to be published in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences promises to reduce the subjectivity of art assessments made by human experts."

Comments

They've got it backwards

[Dancin_Santa]

Extrapolate all that data about each artist's technique, then turn around and paint a bunch of "authentic" art "authored" by those masters.

They already have "pencil sketch", "charcoal sketch", and "regular photo" settings at the picture booths down at your local mall. It's just a matter of running a filter over an original image and reproducing the image with the desired effects.

If they have the filter database built for each master, how hard would it be to have it Markov chain an image with that data?

This seems like the wrong direction if they want to authenticate images.