Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries

[HardOCP News]

Wired has an interesting bit on Adobe’s suite of photo-authentication tools currently under development. This topic has gotten a lot of press lately but the problem remains the same, it is simply too easy to manipulate images and even easier beat even the best photo authenticating tools out there.

Adobe plans to start rolling out the technology in a number of photo-authentication plug-ins for its Photoshop product beginning as early as 2008. The company is working with a leading digital forgery specialist at Dartmouth College, who met with the Associated Press last month.

 

[HardOCP News]

The problem with all this research and technology is that it can be beat by simple methods like:

Manipulate your image (not like the AP photographer did with the clone stamp tool )
Print a high quality image
Photograph the printed image


Now, not only do you have an image from a camera that can be authernticated by the methods mentioned in the article, it beats the color reconstruction test and even gives the image manipulator a 35mm negative of the image that is forged.

Yes, all this research beat by "taking a picture of a picture".

 

[WarMace]

The reasion law enforcement need this software is because when someone photochops a head on a body, their not likely to go through the trouble of the print-scan method.

I have attempted to contact this guy at Darthmouth to see when we can expect a Law Enforcement release, but he never replied. Its nice to see new life breathed into this project, hopefully its not another 2 years before the next press release.

 

[WarMace]

The reasion law enforcement need this software is because when someone photochops a head on a body, their not likely to go through the trouble of the print-scan method.

I have attempted to contact this guy at Darthmouth to see when we can expect a Law Enforcement release, but he never replied. Its nice to see new life breathed into this project, hopefully its not another 2 years before the next press release.

Currently our only tools are the naked eye, because most everything in (Illegal) pornography is touched up, so checking for adobe tags is no good. We rely on birthmarks, and uniformity around the suspected areas.

 

[Ockie]

The problem with all this research and technology is that it can be beat by simple methods like:

Manipulate your image (not like the AP photographer did with the clone stamp tool )
Print a high quality image
Photograph the printed image


Now, not only do you have an image from a camera that can be authernticated by the methods mentioned in the article, it beats the color reconstruction test and even gives the image manipulator a 35mm negative of the image that is forged.

Yes, all this research beat by "taking a picture of a picture".

I'm sure that there is somone out there working on beating this without even the process of manually taking the picture.

 

[OregonLAN]

All one needs to do is take a screenshot of the image, paste it into a non-Adobe application and recompress the image into a new .jpg. Thus, eliminating any digital signature Adobe might use to "authenticate" the image.

Once you become very good at "PhotoChopping" images, it's virtually impossible to detect a forgery. I've actually gone to the lengths of cloning individual pixels to make my work undetectable…