At 1:13 AM +0000 1/5/03, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 22:44:22 -0800
>From: Stephen Scharf <scharfsj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] Re: olympus-digest V2 #3789
>
> >Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 16:24:11 -0500
> >From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
> >Subject: Re: [OM] Cameras Don't Lie
> >
> ><snip>
> >Even with Photoshop, it's pretty hard to make a fake that will
> >withstand expert scrutiny. Even non-experts will notice that the
> >photo just doesn't look quite right, although the non-experts may
> >not be able to put their finger on exactly what's wrong until an
> >expert points it out.
>
>Sorry, IMHO, this is naive. You would be amazed at what Photoshop can
>do in the hands of someone who is truly expert with it.
I'm amazed by magazine ads all the time, and I suppose the fact that the image
is visibly off a bit is considered an advantage as it does draw the eye, so
maybe the photoshop jockey is motivated to leave the image slightly odd and
thus disturbing, so long as it isn't also annoying. However:
It takes a thief to catch a thief. Note the part about *expert* scrutiny.
The problem is the immense amount of information in a photograph, information
that must somehow be rendered self-consistent both internally and with the
physical reality of the thing supposedly imaged. To get some idea of the true
complexity, look into the literature on the generation of photorealistic images
from simulated scenes. Even the best of photoshop jockeys would be overwhelmed
trying to do this by hand.
So, the protections against fakes are much as they always have been:
Practical, the immense effort to make a fake that can pass close, expert
muster. Technical, the tools to generate and to detect fakes have improved
together, being different aspects of the same technology. Legal, the person
who lied under oath saying the image was true always risked imprisionment.
(Actually, we have gone soft in modern times. In the days of the Code of
Hammurabi, false accusers suffered the punishment for the claimed crime. Not
that the details much mattered, as most crimes were capital. "An eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth" was in its day a radical liberal innovation, that the
punishment should fit the crime.)
Joe Gwinn
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