We reveal fakes

Reading Habr, I came across an article about the demise of the Internet with an attached scan of tariffs, which apparently should have put an end to the world wide web. Without really going into the controversy, which was kept in the comments, I noticed that the scan is an ordinary fake, and of low quality. After spending ten minutes analyzing the picture, I published the result .



Several habra users asked to clarify some points in the separation of the wheat from the chaff.



In general, there is nothing wrong with editing images in Photoshop, but sometimes the goal is deception. In this small article with examples, I will try to tell you how it is possible to distinguish a low quality fake in a few minutes (there is no talk of high-quality fakes - even if they manage to pay with fake money)

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So, I conditionally divided the fake features into two groups:

1. Technical issues

Here the main emphasis is placed on the fact that there are not so many methods of “correcting” the image in Photoshop, and if they are used carelessly, they give out a fake with the head.

Take Beckham. We remove the picture from the T-shirt, put a pigeon on his shoulder ( it turns out, it is difficult to make a picture with fake signs )





Update: image reduced and made a link

Item 1. The “Stamp” tool

Visible cloning of a piece of the image. This is done in order to hide something in the original image. With careless use, it turns out like an example - a bunch of identical pieces. In some cases, the same pieces can be located in different parts of the image. Recognized by eyes.

Item 2. Uncut pieces

By carelessness, a photoshop-villain :) may not remove some piece of the source code. Visible foreign spots or contours are noticeable.

Point 3. Overdid

Also, due to inattention, there may be noticeable traces of excessive diligence in cleaning the image of unnecessary parts.

Item 4. Implants

A badly implanted implant image produces a cutout contour (here you can see a pixel “ladder”) and a different color balance, due to which the implant looks alien. Recognized by twisting the contrast and brightness in Photoshop.

It should be noted that the picture-implant may have a different degree of jpeg-compression, different from the degree of compression of the source. To mask this, the picture is either washed or saved with maximum compression (up to the appearance of jpeg-compression artifacts). Recognized in Photoshop by unscrewing the Saturation slider (Ctrl + U) to the maximum. The same method helps to catch glamorous beauties from numerous dating sites in the use of photoshop (“No, it's really so beautiful, no photoshop”). In the same way, “scans” of documents and medical certificates are cut off.

Point 5. All the same inattention

The pigeon has no shadow. This mostly refers to the second group of fake signs, but it is worth saying that the discrepancy between shadows, glare, and reflections with a light source is still a gross technical error. Recognized by attention to detail.

2. This is a failure in the matrix, Neo.

The second group includes effects that could not appear in the real picture, even if you kill yourself. With a perfectly licked picture - the photo shopper suffers from a lack of observation and understanding of the physical (technical, anatomical, geographical and other) aspects of reality. “Wrong” lighting, violation of perspective, the Ostankino tower in Tambov, twisted fingers of a person and all in the same spirit. It requires attentiveness and, to some extent, erudition.