Photography Analysis.

Hey you'll. I'm considering pursuing a career in photo analysis. I was wondering if any of the people here could help me out. So can anyone give me any files to read, programs or anything else.

Fox

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you want to learn how to use Photoshop and Data analysis software to determine if an image is tampered with or anything?

What is you goal as to analyze photos?

You can't exactly read a few books, learn how to use a few programs, and automatically be an expert at forensic image analysis. Most people in the field have spent decades looking at images, mostly professionally I would think.

Here's a little test. Nothing serious, but it'd sure be interesting to see what you get: Fake or Foto?

First time I tried this, I got a single image wrong on the final part of the test.

This sort of stuff isn't easy.

I want to learn to see if the images are modified, as in if a UFO was placed in an image instead of being taken. Any help ?

reply to post by ProTo Fire Fox


I don't know if there is any way of detecting tampering automatically, but there are some signs for which you could look for to see if there was any tampering, like slightly different shades of the colours and different levels of JPEG compression in some areas of the image (when an image with a higher compression is used over an image with less compression), but I think the best is to practise.

You can try a test with two photos I have, one of these two was altered, the other was not, try to see if you can find which of the images was altered and what was the part of the image that suffered the alteration.

Image 1

Image 2

reply to post by ArMaP


Thank you for that little bit of information there. I belive that it is the coloring on a tile that is incorrect. I have highlighted it here.

Fox

No, that tile is really like that, it was a fault in the making of the tile.

Do you want to try again before I tell which is the altered photo and show you how it really was before I gave it my "treatment"?

reply to post by ArMaP


I'm not sure then, i thought it was the tile. I guess i need more practise.

Fox

reply to post by ProTo Fire Fox


Do you want me to show you the altered image before the alteration?

If you do I will send you a U2U, so the original image can stay unpublished to be used in other occasions.

After a quick look, the keyboard seems to be a bit of the track.

I think the non-keyboard one has been altered.

The brown strip going across the top clearly reflects the pattern of the wall tile towards the right, but this is impossible given that the tile has already been reflected on the white part near the rear of the machine, and the brown strip is angled down meaning that it simply cannot see that wall tile.
Also, the front of the far left edge of the brown strip is quite sharp, but as you look back it blurs noticeably, which is usually evidence of a cut-and-paste that someone has tried to mask with the clone tool, etc.
The light is too uniform along the front of the machine in general, but there are light splodges visible along the entire wall if you don't examine the image too closely, and there is a noticeable track of bright light going into and beyond the left hand corner from the top rear edge of the machine. In the shadow areas around the left corner noise is also very visible, which usually isn't the case unless an image has been lightened in post processing.

If I'm wrong, then ignore the above

The keyboard image is kinda confusing. You've dragged the shutter to create the minor blur, evident on some of the keys too the left, but the shadows of the paper, etc to the far left of the image don't match up with the shadows the keyboard casts. But I don't believe the keyboard was shopped in, so I really don't know on the keyboard one.

If I had to, I'd say the machine is the faked one.

The obvious thing would to have Min , Normal, Max and then Stop on the left side.. But there is no obvious fault in the image compression. When the JPEG compresses the image it makes different sizes of cubic compression blocks. And at times they are so "horrible" that they may look altered.

If anyone wants to know the truth about those two photos just send me a U2U and I will show the altered photo before it was altered.

I only ask not to divulge the unaltered photo, so it can be used in other occasions, it took me some hours (more than four but maybe closer to six) to do it, but it was great fun.

Well now fella, that was a shock when you showed me what it did look like, i wont say it here, don't want to spoil the surprise, but people - for god sake U2U its defiantly out-there

Fox

reply to post by watch_the_rocks


pah - i got 9 out of ten right

the one i got wrong - i just jumped to the ` its real ` conclusion - looking @ the rest the devil was indeed in the details

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
You can't exactly read a few books, learn how to use a few programs, and automatically be an expert at forensic image analysis. Most people in the field have spent decades looking at images, mostly professionally I would think.

Here's a little test. Nothing serious, but it'd sure be interesting to see what you get: Fake or Foto?

First time I tried this, I got a single image wrong on the final part of the test.

This sort of stuff isn't easy.

Same, just got 9/10

I got the diamonds incorrect.