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Time sensitive issue--Please respond immediately--Image Morphing

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by ttosun 1 view

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Does anyone know of any software or anything that can detect if an image has been morphed?

It's nearly impossible to detect with the naked eye, if an image has been changed.

12 replies

by jmgarvin

You might need a keen eye, but this is the easiest way to do it.

1) Open the picture in photoshop
2) Zoom in on the area you suspect is photoshopped
3) check from changes in pixelation, colors or bluring that doesn't look like it fits

Does that help?

by gralfus

Do an MD5 checksum of the original, then an MD5 of the one in question. If they match, then no changes were made. If there is any difference in the checksums, then it was changed. There are many programs available for doing this. (I use the DOS SHA_Verify from Maresware: http://www.maresware.com/maresware/freesoftware.htm)

Now, if you need to know *what* was changed, that is more difficult. If you are familar with looking at 3D photographs, you can make your eyes merge the two and look for any "electric" areas that don't quite merge. This will tell you where the area is that was changed. If many little areas were changed, or the change was not significant, then it will be hard to locate.

by ttosun

I don't have any way of obtaining the original image. The only images I have are ones that may have already been altered.

by ttosun

Unfortunately, with todays sophisticated Photoshop "artists", there really is no way to tell using your suggested method. But thank you.

by jmgarvin

You can tell, you need to look for shading and pixels and the smoothing or extra pixelation that occurs with a photoshop.

It is possible and it happens all the time. You just need to zoom and and look carefully for seams or areas that don't match properly with the surrounding area.

Another way to do this is for you to increase the gamma on the image and make sure the gamma increase is universal. If it has been photoshopped some areas will not increase in brightness or increase more in brightness than other areas.

Yet another suggestion is to try to color change the image. Same as gamma, but with colors ;-)

by gralfus

Without the original, there is no way to tell if there was a change. You only have one reference point, and that is the copy.

by salmonslayer

There are programs being developed to do exactly that -- I have seen some of these in action and they are quite impressive. Essentially, anytime there is an addition to a photograph, the addition is never the precise size required but must be resized. The program determines this resizing by examining the edges. As well, it can also determine whether a specific area of a photograph has been cloned elsewhere in the photograph.

Alas, the program is still being developed and has not been released. I saw this first on the Discovery Channel (Daily Planet, I believe) so the site may have more info.

by gralfus

How do you know the original was not a piece of digital art that was created manually (cutting pasting, blurring, sharpening, etc.), rather than a photograph? The question here is whether the original graphic was changed, and that cannot be determined without the original to compare against.

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