UFO photo.

Just for comparison, lets look at what this forensic thing does with one of my heavily photoshopped images.

Img with Lots of Photoshop layers

Originally posted by midniteracerx
Just for comparison, lets look at what this forensic thing does with one of my heavily photoshopped images.

Img with Lots of Photoshop layers

Must be real. Kidding of course.

Good work my friend.

Originally posted by midniteracerx
Just for comparison, lets look at what this forensic thing does with one of my heavily photoshopped images.

Img with Lots of Photoshop layers

Really cool piece! Try overlay or soft light for the tree shadow layers and the turtle shadow layer. That will give you better colors for the shadows. Right now they look more like a layer of painted shadow which is flat grey and has no hue. Overlay as a blending mode gives the shadow the hue of whatever is underneath it. Hope you are ok with my critique, I always enjoy great art and that is an awesome piece!

The forensic dealie doesn't seem to pick up any big signs of manipulation... Does anybody really truly know how to use the error level analysis to discern an image's legitimacy?

Here's an unedited photo of a city via that tool:
errorlevelanalysis.com...

Also, on the tool's main page (errorlevelanalysis.com...), it shows an example of what to look for, and you can see that the difference in color in the error level image is way larger than in any of the OP's photos, and in the turtle image. I don't think this is a good tool for what we are trying to do; its method seems indiscriminate or too rough.

reply to post by tetsuo


Not to get all off topic, but I love critiques. I find them very helpful. Its better than just hearing how nice your picture is. I do believe the shadows blending modes were soft light and then overlay for underneath the turtle. I did rush through them a bit because it was the last thing I worked on and my eyes were killing me from staring at the image for hours haha.

So this forensics tool doesn't seem too useful if we can't figure out what we're actually looking at. In my image, the forensics got brighter in areas that I lightened, as well as areas I darkened, but not all of them. I can't even tell if the 5 gradient maps I used are effecting anything. It doesn't even seem to be distinguishing all of the different layers I used.

reply to post by tetsuo


From tetsuo`s work on the photos we see :

Picture one
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/23a773acbb68.jpg[/atsimg]

picture three
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/335b7c1705a5.jpg[/atsimg]

Looks like cut and paste to me but I want to know what you think tetsuo.

FAKE UFO FAIL!

Originally posted by greeneyedleo
OP sent me another photo....

PHOTO HERE

edit on January 10th 2011 by greeneyedleo because: (no reason given)

Bad photoshop. 400% zoom clearly shows a pixel box around the "ufo".

reply to post by kmarx


kmarx,

Could you please upload your image for all to see?
along with other examples showing this image to be the same as you stated
'bad photoshop' I believe was your desciption

reply to post by youdidntseeme


img121.imageshack.us...
img213.imageshack.us...

took me 5 minutes tops to find out this was a hoax. open ps. zoom 500%. invert colors. turn off red/green. bingo.
notice how the second image doesn't have the pixelated box around it? third image(1st link) is in my opinion a bad photoshop. the first and second image(2nd link) are much better attempts at a hoax.

reply to post by kmarx


I still see something to my right of the trees, so how is it a fake image or hoax?

reply to post by lewtra


I have followed through this interesting study in photography and wonder at everyone who wants to subject themselves to all this massive amount of photographic jargon when all one did was to take a picture and post it to share. I recall the original statement was to see a genuine ufo. The debate about it has been incredible.

I did learn about imageshack and how to join and share photos there as a result of this ats sharing method. Thanks for introducing me to another photo share group.

I appreciate it that those who do see the photos first are able to post them so that we can see them since Imageshack took it down. I am wondering if one joins there how one goes about seeing them there.

I would hope that all those who claim to have seen this ufo keep and maintain a journal of all their experiences from now until whenever to see if life goes on normally as it had before the sighting or if it somehow changes on them. I find that ufo experiences often have strange consequences for those who see them.

reply to post by kmarx


Here's a random photo. It's of a city called Gyantse in Tibet. From wikipedia.

If you go through the same steps you took on that UFO photo on this photo, you will find little boxes surrounding pretty much everything. edit: you can play with Levels, Exposure, Brightness/Contrast, Curves, Channels, Emboss, Threshold, and more to get more information visible

In fact, in almost every photo you encounter, you will find boxes around everything. That is image compression. When you see an image that ends in .jpg, it is almost always compressed. The compression uses rectangular areas in its process and so you will see compression artifacts.

reply to post by tetsuo


Tetsuo stealing my thunder again here haha

I was about to point out the other 90 degree angles in kmarx's image that are either the clouds or the tress from the original image, I am not sure which because its such a small sample of the image with nothing to compare it to.

Nevertheless, I think that this thread is withering on the vine because of all the uestions raised and the OP's reluctance to provide any more answers.

and for comparison, above in the thread (ats post) an obviously photoshopped image was analyzed, and yet no similar artifacts can be found.

reply to post by tetsuo


then why is the pixel box missing in my second link but very much apparent in the first link?

Originally posted by kmarx
reply to post by tetsuo

 

then why is the pixel box missing in my second link but very much apparent in the first link?

So by your logic, one of the images is shopped but the other isnt? so one is a hoax and the other isnt?
or are you just operating from the assumption that is has to be a hoax so how can i prove it to be?

reply to post by youdidntseeme


i'd make the conclusion that the first link is a bad or rushed photo editing attempt. while the second link someone took more time to make a more convincing "product".

Here, I'll do the little fiddling for you on the Tibet image. That will answer any question about compression artifacts and the blockies.

I adjust the levels first. Here is an enlarged, levels-adjust slice:


Here is an even more enlarged crop, with all the relevant artifacts marked:


Notice that pretty much the whole image is made up of little square or rectangular tiles. Some adjacent tiles have little patterns within them which connect quite smoothly to each other. But the rectangular compression artifacts are everywhere. The image compression software thinks and processes in rectangular portions of data, which can be represented by a matrix:
[1,50
1,25]
The two coordinates indicate a rectangular area which will be filled with a solid color, to further broken down into smaller rectangular portions colored the same color. Some of these areas are a single pixel and would be represented by a single coordinate:
[5,20]
There is no simpler, more efficient, or effective way to compress images than using rectangles. OK, maybe there are better methods. One is by breaking the image down into circles, which can be represented with three bits of data:
[x,y,r]
X,Y = Coordinate of center point, R = radius
You'll have to google yourself if you want to learn more, but it's really neat. I cannot remember the name of the method. Circles don't work well with square pixels, though.
Another cool way to compress images which will not result in rectangular artifacts is fractal-based compression, but I don't really know anything about that.

The point is, four bits of data is a small amount of space for a compressed area of the image. This of course does not count the color of the image. But it is very easy to process this type of compression, creates reasonably high quality images with a small filesize.

When there are changing colors from one pixel/area of the image to the next, you will see blocks. A photo of a sunset, for example, with all its smooth color gradients, will have long strips of color horizontally when you toy with the image in photoshop. Normally there would be perhaps one hundred different colors in a one hundred pixel thick strip of sunset. That would take up a lot of storage space, at least compared to the compressed version. Those 100 different colors might only be a tiny bit different, and the computer will break them down into say 5 strips, each 20 pixels thick, each a solid color.

Since I have nothing else to do and I've just had a nice smoke, let's do some math.
- Our sunset image is 640x480 pixels.
- One 100 px thick strip would be 640x100 pixels, area = 64000 px
- If each of those were a different color, there would be 2 integer coordinates (x,y) plus color data needed for each pixel. Each pixel would be an individual rectangular unit of color (cause it's a square). That is a lot of data. This would be the uncompressed image.

Let's compress it, and say that each 640x1 px row within the 100px thick strip is all the same color. In a real photo, they would not be the same color. It would vary slightly throughout. Anyways.

We'd have 100 individual rectangular units of color, each represented by 4 integer coordinates (x1,y1,x2,y2 - define the rectangle) and plus color data (which is just one single color). This compressed strip of sunset requires ~1/320 the amount of data as the uncompressed sunset strip.

Further compression would make it even smaller. We're going to compress to the point where the image will be of bad quality. It will be totally recognizable and still look pretty if it was a pretty sunset, but you will know it is low quality. Math:
- 640 x 100 px strip is divided into 5 strips of 20 px each
- We will have 5 individual rectangular color units (each having an area of 640x20=12800px), each represented by 4 integer coordinates and a single color. That's a total of 20 integers and 5 colors needed to create the strip of sunset, versus 128000 integers and 64000 colors needed for the uncompressed version which has a different color for each pixel.

If you see an image that ends in .jpg, it is compressed. Sometimes it will be compressed at a high quality and have a larger file size and hardly discernible compression artifacts. But that's how it works, and nearly every digital image suffers from compression.

Hope that helps explain compression and compression artifacts and why they are there in every UFO photo, and every other photo too

edit: Compression artifacts are probably most commonly found surrounding objects which stand out against a relatively solid color background. Like things in the air, or skylines. Good to know.

edit2: Oh yeah, why is it there on one image and not in the next? They are different images. It's different depending on the light that is received. I could find you some compression artifacts in any compressed image, meaning any image. There are compression artifacts in the second one you posted, I can see them without editing the image at all. Just look at your monitor from a different angle (if it's LCD that is).

obvious fake. No Doubt about that.

Meh, I find it pretty suspicious that he hasn't replied for quite some time. I also find it very suspicious that he was like "I don't wanna post the other pictures until i see how you guys respond"... That says to me "I haven't finished Photoshopping so I'm going to buy some time"

The worst part of this thread is that the OP posts in increments, doesn't confront the questions we ask. He also appears and disappears very suddenly. If he thought he had evidence of an interstellar craft why would he not engage in any of the discussion here and help us investigate.

Instead, he drops the photos off and leaves. And "we" sit here and bicker over something we do not know the full story of. This is really fuggin lame. Everyone here has injected great input and explained their view, and this OP is doesn't even seem to care. The OP doesn't even give a rats ass that we are here dissecting his photos.

Anyone else see something wrong with this picture? (no pun intended).

I applaud everyone who stopped in to give their analysys. Kudos to you.

In most cases on this site, someone posts a picture they find and say "hey, dont kill the messenger, it's not my photo".

And in this case we should be so lucky to have a member that could have something worthy to add to the community and they can't even show up to discuss.

BULLS*^%!!!!!!!!!