Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
Yes, I am addicted to Digital Crack. I put politicians and Ricochet editors alike in my Photoshop sights and fire away, splattering bits and bytes on the Road to Perdition that is the internet.
Above everything else I try to maintain a clear air of parody about my work, never trying to pass off something as being real when it is not. Still, one takes pride in a really well done piece because it takes a certain artistic skill. At least it used to. Watch the following video and prepare to be chilled:
The scary part, of course is the ease at which all the manipulation is accomplished. In the recent past, an Arab freelancer for Reuters was caught manipulating images of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The doctoring was poorly done, fairly obvious and eventually cost a photo editor at the wire service his job. This new development may make it harder to detect such chicanery.
And the deception is not necessarily limited to still photography. Monday night's broadcast of the "reality show" MasterChef on FOX included a not-so-real image of “thousands upon thousands lined up” to try out for the show’s second season. Only the manipulation was too obvious. (Note the woman in the bright orange jacket.)
We're not into "Wag the Dog" territory yet, but that time is coming.
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Aug '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
Thank you for this, EJ. It's extremely important stuff to be aware of. I think I speak for all Ricocheters when I say we really enjoy your sense of humor.
May '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
Wow. Entertainment Weekly is a Time Inc. publication where sanctimony is paramount. This should be an enormous scandal.
Aug '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
There was a similar plugin available for GIMP (for free) before Photoshop added content-aware edits. It's called Resynthesizer. Along with Liquid Rescale, it's one of my favourite GIMP plugins.
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
It can be a real problem in court. Run of the mill cases don't involve the kind of money to send photos to experts to check for evidence of manipulation, but the manipulation is so easy as you indicate.
EJ - can an expert really tell if something is photoshopped by looking at a print out of a picture, photocopied a couple of times (courts accept the photocopies into evidence)?
Edited on Jun 23, 2011 at 10:30amMay '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
It depends on original source material and the skill of the artist. The trick is to begin with originals that are higher resolution than your intended output. If you begin with something very high, say 600 pixels per inch and then reduce it, the compression itself will hide evidence of manipulation.
Consider that the world's highest resolution commercially available camera can give you images of 80 MP and your average web resolution is 72 pixels/inch. That's a lot of wiggle room. (And the camera only costs US $31,995!)
Now, how many dpi is your print out? See, the more you fudge and get away from the original the more deceptive you can be.
You have to look for traces of the manipulation. Bad cuts, missing or conflicting shadows and light sources. Let me give an example on my bad self. Yeti asks for things on short deadline sometimes and I let some things slide that I normally would not. Take a look at this and then I'll tell you what's wrong.
May '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
*Continued*
The tell here is the bad shadow. The light source on Rob is obviously from the right yet the shadow is casting from a left source. Oooops.
In this example, however, I was very careful in duplicating the multiple shadows for the baby that showed for the President in the original, including changes in direction caused by the proximity of the background. That takes time. And if I were a forger, I would have spent many more hours on an image that only took me one to produce for publication.
For a laugh on what does pass these days you can visit PSD: PhotoShop Disasters
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
EJHill
Take a look at this and then I'll tell you what's wrong. · Jun 23 at 10:45am
Allow me to put my ignorance on full display. I don't see anything wrong with it. What am I missing?
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
EJHill: *Continued*
The tell here is the bad shadow. The light source on Rob is obviously from the right yet the shadow is casting from a left source. Oooops.
In this example, however, I was very careful in duplicating the multiple shadows for the baby that showed for the President in the original, including changes in direction caused by the proximity of the background. That takes time. And if I were a forger, I would have spent many more hours on an image that only took me one to produce for publication.
For a laugh on what does pass these days you can visit PSD: PhotoShop Disasters · Jun 23 at 10:56am
Oh wow! Once you pointed out the shodoews it couldn't be more obvious!
That's why experts are experts.
Nov '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
At sixteen I struggled to get just the right print exposure by dodging the light from my enlarger with my fist before dipping the paper in a series of caustic chemicals (I still have stop bath burns on my arm).
I was thrilled at twenty when, after all night in the darkroom, I successfully sandwiched two negatives and made it look like a giant preying mantis was climbing on top of a building at the University of Missouri.
At 58 I fire up CS4 and swap backgrounds, skew perspectives, tweak lighting, and add or delete entire objects or people at will, and I am self-taught.
Photoshop and all of the other digital image manipulation software with which we are familiar are readily available to anyone. Just imagine what exists that we are not privy to? I heard a forensics expert speak a couple of years ago and remember his ominous assertion, "Seeing is no longer believing."
Tommy--the answer to your question is "No", if the digital manipulation was done with skill. Without the original digital file available to examine at the pixel level, an altered photo can be very hard to spot.
The dog is being wagged.
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
Tommy De Seno
EJHill: *Continued*
The tell here is the bad shadow. The light source on Rob is obviously from the right yet the shadow is casting from a left source. Oooops.
In this example, however, I was very careful in duplicating the multiple shadows for the baby that showed for the President in the original, including changes in direction caused by the proximity of the background. That takes time. And if I were a forger, I would have spent many more hours on an image that only took me one to produce for publication.
For a laugh on what does pass these days you can visit PSD: PhotoShop Disasters · Jun 23 at 10:56am
Oh wow! Once you pointed out the shodows it couldn't be more obvious!
That's why experts are experts. · Jun 23 at 10:59am
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
Tommy--the answer to your question is "No", if the digital manipulation was done with skill. Without the original digital file available to examine at the pixel level, an altered photo can be very hard to spot.
The dog is being wagged. · Jun 23 at 11:01am
Scary. I wonder if the Court shouldn't revisit the rule about accepting photocopies of photographs into evidence.
Feb '11
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
EJHill
Angle of the shadow is strange. Lots of different angles. But that's only a guess.
Edited on Jun 23, 2011 at 11:08amRe: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
Well, having seen quite a few ' shops in my time, I can usually tell by the pixels. But one of the tell-tale signs of photoshop abuse is poor clone-tool management - lazy PS users don't think people will notice small blades of grass that repeat, but they do.
The most difficult thing for people to create in Photoshop? Old ads. They never get it right. The fonts, the artwork, the layout, the copy - no one seems to have any instinctive grasp for the medium. Odd.
May '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
The law always lags the technology. There are several proposals on the table that would require cameras to produce a digital watermark that identifies the camera that produced the image. Kodak and Epson used an early version of it that so distorted the images that it made them unacceptable for forensic use.
Here's a good place to start on what can be done to prevent tampering with evidence.
Nov '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
Tommy De Seno
Tommy--the answer to your question is "No", if the digital manipulation was done with skill. Without the original digital file available to examine at the pixel level, an altered photo can be very hard to spot.
The dog is being wagged. · Jun 23 at 11:01am
Scary. I wonder if the Court shouldn't revisit the rule about accepting photocopies of photographs into evidence. · Jun 23 at 11:06am
I'm a little out of the loop on this, but last time I talked to a police evidence tech he told me they were not taking digital photos (at his department) to use as evidence in criminal cases, only film. I can see very successful challenges made in court to just about any digital image, and as you pointed out, the cost of expert verification could get insane. As the technology advances, consumer-level manipulation will become just as commonplace and refined in digital movies.
EJ--I haven't read up on it, but Hasselblad is shipping this 200MP beauty for $45,000!
May '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
I think that's because of the end medium. Old ads look the way they do because of the way they were printed as much as the way they were designed, and maybe more so. The output from a digital source would never match that of a 1940's 4-color separation press.
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
James Lileks: Well, having seen quite a few ' shops in my time, I can usually tell by the pixels. But one of the tell-tale signs of photoshop abuse is poor clone-tool management - lazy PS users don't think people will notice small blades of grass that repeat, but they do.
The most difficult thing for people to create in Photoshop? Old ads. They never get it right. The fonts, the artwork, the layout, the copy - no one seems to have any instinctive grasp for the medium. Odd. · Jun 23 at 11:14am
Isn't that a Fark meme?
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
J. C. Casteel
Tommy De Seno
Tommy--the answer to your question is "No", if the digital manipulation was done with skill. Without the original digital file available to examine at the pixel level, an altered photo can be very hard to spot.
The dog is being wagged. · Jun 23 at 11:01am
Scary. I wonder if the Court shouldn't revisit the rule about accepting photocopies of photographs into evidence. · Jun 23 at 11:06am
I'm a little out of the loop on this, but last time I talked to a police evidence tech he told me they were not taking digital photos (at his department) to use as evidence in criminal cases, only film.
In New Jersey civil cases, the standard to have a picture admitted into evidence is very low. I only have to have a witness look at the photo, and answer yes to the following question:
"Does the photo accurately depict the scene of the incident on the day in question?"
I don't have to prove who took the photo, with what, if it's a photo copy or where it's been in the mean time.
Edited on Jun 23, 2011 at 11:36amRe: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
EJ: agreed, but there are many ways to manipulate the medium so it looks like old paper, and more than a few filters that can simulate old printing techniques or the film used in the 30s and 40s. I'm talking about the composition, the design elements, the way "retro" is used to describe styles from widely disparate periods. This, for example. They're all cool, but they're all wrong.
May '10
Re: Photoshop and Wagging the Dog
That's a difference in mind-set. Ads made in the period were actually trying to be new and modern. "Retro" is trying to create something without intimate knowledge of the era you're seeking to recreate and too much knowledge of the present day.