Picture Imperfect Research Paper
Picture imperfect
The Economist, March 9, 2013
Digital imaging: Insurers, publishers, law-enforcement agencies and dating sites are using software that can detect the digital manipulation of photos
THE photo splashed across front pages worldwide in July 2008 showed four Iranian test missiles blasting skywards. Released by the media arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Sepah News, the picture (top) was soon found to have been manipulated: one missile had been cloned and appeared twice, evidently to conceal the fact that another had failed to lift off (see original image, below). Governments have long doctored photos for political reasons. In Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, senior figures who fell from favour were commonly airbrushed …show more content…
Online images are exempt, however. "We're not going to correct the whole world," says Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliamentarian who sponsored the bill. The "Photoshop law", as it is known, has prompted efforts to pass similar legislation in America.
A feature introduced several years ago by Canon and Nikon, the two leading camera manufacturers, gives photographers a way to prove, if challenged, that their images have not been manipulated. When a picture is taken, the cameras attach a coded signature that is destroyed if the image is modified and resaved. An intact signature, then, should prove that a photo is genuine. But researchers at ElcomSoft, a computersecurity firm based in Moscow, have shown that the system is easily fooled. Counterfeiters can copy an image's security signature and reapply it after retouching, says Vladimir Katalov, ElcomSoft's boss.
Another way to determine whether an image has been manipulated or not relies on the fact that in a digital camera's grid of millions of light sensors, several are usually flawed. Each flaw creates a tiny discolouration, imperceptible to the naked eye, in pictures taken by the camera. If the pattern of
The Economist, March 9, 2013
Digital imaging: Insurers, publishers, law-enforcement agencies and dating sites are using software that can detect the digital manipulation of photos
THE photo splashed across front pages worldwide in July 2008 showed four Iranian test missiles blasting skywards. Released by the media arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Sepah News, the picture (top) was soon found to have been manipulated: one missile had been cloned and appeared twice, evidently to conceal the fact that another had failed to lift off (see original image, below). Governments have long doctored photos for political reasons. In Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, senior figures who fell from favour were commonly airbrushed …show more content…
Online images are exempt, however. "We're not going to correct the whole world," says Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliamentarian who sponsored the bill. The "Photoshop law", as it is known, has prompted efforts to pass similar legislation in America.
A feature introduced several years ago by Canon and Nikon, the two leading camera manufacturers, gives photographers a way to prove, if challenged, that their images have not been manipulated. When a picture is taken, the cameras attach a coded signature that is destroyed if the image is modified and resaved. An intact signature, then, should prove that a photo is genuine. But researchers at ElcomSoft, a computersecurity firm based in Moscow, have shown that the system is easily fooled. Counterfeiters can copy an image's security signature and reapply it after retouching, says Vladimir Katalov, ElcomSoft's boss.
Another way to determine whether an image has been manipulated or not relies on the fact that in a digital camera's grid of millions of light sensors, several are usually flawed. Each flaw creates a tiny discolouration, imperceptible to the naked eye, in pictures taken by the camera. If the pattern of