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Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the vanished-commisars dept.

Several readers wrote in with a Wired story about the work Adobe is doing to detect photo forgery. They are working with Canon and Reuters (which suffered massive bad publicity last year over a doctored war photo) and a professor from Dartmouth. (Here is Reuters's policy on photo editing.) Adobe plans to produce a suite of photo-authentication tools based on the work of Hany Farid (PDF) for release in 2008.

8 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Matching images to cameras by AmIAnAi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't help thinging that matching images to individual cameras will be a dangerous step, particularly for those working in less 'democratic' counties. I hope this will be an option that can be turned off, but I expect it will not.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
  2. Bad Control by bdrees · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thats fine that Adobe's creating this software, but the bottom line is poor control with reuters. When reuters can prove their internal controls will stop altered images from making it to press, thats when their integrity may start to come back.

  3. You know what would be cool... by s31523 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If digital cameras did some sort of "unbreakable" digital signature via steganography or checksum or something when pictures were snapped. In this day and age I think that would be great. You snap a picture, and bam the pixels are embedded with something such that an alterations to the picture could be detected.

  4. One thing you won't see mentioned here by Illbay · · Score: 5, Insightful
    These forgeries have become the stock-in-trade of the "stringers" used by "venerable" news agencies such as Reuters and AP. Many of these stringers are in fact confederates of terrorists and criminals, and their work is part of the disinformation campaign that is part of the GWOT.

    However, it is impossible for Reuters (known by many as "al-Reuters") or AP (a.k.a. Associated [with terrorists] Press) not to know that they're being "used." In fact, they are willing accomplices, for the old-line media are now and have been for three decades in league with any and every force arrayed against the United States of America, in the interest of "giving both sides of the story."

    Up next: a parade of "mainstream media" executive-types testifying before the U.S. Congress in favor of "the fairness doctrine," so they can gain their hegemony back through legal fiat, that they lost through their own arrogant duplicity.

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
    1. Re:One thing you won't see mentioned here by TigerPlish · · Score: 2, Insightful

      These forgeries have become the stock-in-trade of the "stringers" used by "venerable" news agencies such as Reuters and AP. Many of these stringers are in fact confederates of terrorists and criminals, and their work is part of the disinformation campaign that is part of the GWOT. Ask for a refund for your tinfoil hat. I think it is broken.

      Photo manipulation has been around since the beginning of photography. Proving a photograph has been diddled with can be quite difficult.

      So now you say AP and Reuters work for the "other side". That "stringers" are in the employ of terrorists and criminals. Proof? Sources? Or is it that you don't like to see photographs critical of our policies and actions here and abroad?

      I mean, that's what photojournalism is for -- to show Joe and Jane Sixpack things they normally wouldn't see. If you ask me, I'll tell you part of the distaste our country had for the Vietnam war was fueled by photographs taken in Vietnam by photographers represented by AP, Reuters, Magnum, and other agencies. Like Nick Ut's shot of the girl running towards the camera, skin fairly melting off from a napalm strike. Or like a series LIFE ran showing a day in the life of a helicopter crew, including the pain of mortal wounds, the reactions of the chopper's crew to their crewmate's loss.. the anger and pain and frustration visibile on the gunner's face after a mission goes bad and they lose half the crew? Were those faked? Were those pictures taken to aid the other side? I don't think so. They were taken in the heat of battle, they show battle, and what comes out of battle. Mainly injury and death. That should be shown, regardless of whose death or injury it is. War by nature is injurious -- people need to be reminded of that. Preferably without something like Fox MovieTone News filtering it, cleaning it up and sanitizing it for our protection.

      Y'know, like Fox News does today. They *ARE* the MovieTone News of our times, and are every inch as fake and hokey as MovieTone newsreels were back in the day.

      No thanks. I'd rather see the real deal, un-diddled, un-edited, preferably from an agency born from 2 great war photographers: Magnum.

      Good photojournalism shows you the image, and nothing more. It is up to the viewer to decide if what is being depicted is good, or bad. If it is in line with our goals, or not. Good photojournalism makes the viewer think about things they may not like to think about.

      To paint all photographers with your broad brush does the profession a disservice. These people risk their lives to get that picture.

      Maybe you'd like to read up on one Robert Capa, and how he got his ticket punched in what would later be called the Vietnam War, in 1955, after being retired, after vowing never to cover a war after covering WWII, after going into Normandy with the 1st wave. He went to Vietnam as a favor to LIFE (who'd bailed him out many a time).. stepped off a truck in a convoy to get a shot of the convoy, triggered a landmine, and died with his Contax II in his hand. When you tar and feather the entire profession, you're also tarring and feathering people who gave their lives so the Western press could show people like you what was going on in some hellhole whose name no one can even pronounce right. Just like photographers today risk their lives to show you what we're doing in some other hellhole whose name we can't even pronounce right. >.

      Or is it that you *dont* want anyone to see what our armed forces are doing Over There, at the command of our deranged politicians and policies? Hmmm?

      --
      The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
  5. Same problem by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a technical solution to a social problem. The problem is that journalists wish to change the world, and they can change it by slanting the news to conform with their personal beliefs. Also, journalists who merely report what goes on are derided as "police blotter reporters" or worse. It's expected that they'll go out of their way to make a story where none existed before. The idea that fraud detection will eliminate photo forgeries is naive, because they will always happen.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  6. Re:Why not... by foniksonik · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's Cancel or Allow... the Apple commercials always say "Cancel or Allow?"

    --
    A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  7. MOD PARENT UP by vyrus128 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Grandparent is full of shit. First of all, the replicated images are NOT AT THE SAME PLACE relative to the gridlines as the original. That totally negates all the bullshit about humans not editing in powers of two. Secondly, there's no way that dust/scratch removal would stretch the column of smoke upwards in the way it was done in the doctored image. An entire section of the image was displaced upwards, including a whole giant mess o' 16x16 areas. Explain to me what business scratch removal software has doing that?