We should not believe everything we see or read, social networks are full of images that have been manipulated with Photoshop, we hope with this article you can more easily recognize the manipulated images.

Let’s start with the simplest and easiest methods:

Washing the face

It has probably been a while since you see a picture of a person’s face and you get the feeling that the picture is not real. Trusting the image is correct and accepting that the image is real is not the safest way to do this. It is usually easier to tell if an image is fake than you think.

Washed images usually look too dreamy and fancy and repulsive. This phenomenon is called ghosting in aesthetics. Even if a person’s skin is perfectly healthy, in most light conditions, some wrinkles and pores appear.

It will be clear. When these imperfections are removed digitally, a very bright and shiny texture appears. Experts in Photoshop usually strike a balance between reality and dream, while amateurs and mobile applications produce clumsy results in almost all cases.

Images in which people are moved are usually in the same state, the details inside the face are not the same as other parts of the head, and you can understand the image with a little attention.

Very sharp edges or very blurry objects

If someone clumsily adds something to the image, it is possible that they did not cut the edges well.

Wavy image lines

Sometimes the main subject in the image does not look manipulated, but looking at the background you can see signs of stretching, cropping or resizing.

Distortions in the lines of the manipulated images usually do not comply with the laws of physics, you have probably seen examples of manipulations that have disturbed the background of the image. People who want to look more athletic or slimmer.

Look for duplicate patterns and components

The clone tool in Photoshop is popular with people looking to hide objects or parts of an image. Clouds, crowds, trees, parts of clothing or skin are the resources that Photoshop workers use to cover deleted components.

This method is sometimes used to make the image more crowded, repeating the crowded parts of the image, increasing the number of trees, flowers or even increasing the stars in the night sky can be the result of this method. Duplicate clouds or structures are usually recognizable in manipulated images.

shadows

When a part of the image is mounted on the original image, Photoshop may have forgotten the difference in shadows or even the presence of shadows.

The angle and amount of light and texture of the shadows should usually match.

Look for blurred and noisy parts

When an image is downloaded and uploaded many times, the effect of compression algorithms is usually visible, but all images are affected after a few times of downloading and uploading.

The important point is that in the manipulated images, there may be a difference in the amount of JPEG noise between the manipulated part of the image and the normal part of the image.

For example, if you want to delete text from an image, you might do so with the brush tool, which will result in a textured section that, after saving the image in JPEG format, will likely detect detectable noise on the inside edge of the textured section.

Check EXIF ​​photo file information

EXIF information is stored in the image file by the image creation software or hardware, camera model, shutter speed, ISO, lens aperture, and so on.

If the camera has GPS and location saving settings are enabled, the latitude and longitude of the shooting location will also be saved in the photo file.

If you are a little familiar with photographic terms, you can detect image manipulation from EXIF ​​information, such as slow shutter speeds blurring moving objects, or long focal lengths (high zoom) should not produce a fish-eye image ( Do not look like selfies or wide)

In the case of latitude and longitude, you can also compare the same location with latitude and longitude inside the photo file by entering the latitude and longitude stored in the image.

Of course, keep in mind that the existence of image editing tools such as Photoshop and GIMP does not necessarily mean that the image is fake, there are many reasons for photographers to slightly modify the camera’s raw images, such as removing too much light in the image.

Use auxiliary tools

If you can not understand the manipulation of the images with the naked eye, you can use aids. The following are tools and methods that will help you more easily detect manipulation.

For example , on this page, which is designed to detect image manipulation , you will find a set of interesting tools:

Automatic detection of duplicate objects

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You usually do not need to change the settings, wait a while to see the analysis results.

ELA analysis

ELA is actually the output of an algorithm in which manipulated image objects will be detected due to properties that are inconsistent with the original image.

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If part of the ELA test result is not identical to the image itself, you should suspect that part, the edges of which appear to be similar should look the same in terms of light and color.

PCA

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 It has a similar function, but with the difference that it will work better in smooth areas without image texture.

Reverse Google Image Search

Another tool you’ve probably worked with, of course, is Google’s reverse image search, AI and cloud computing will do the job, and if the original manipulated image is available to Google, you’ll quickly notice the different parts of the manipulated image.

News sites

Another point left is to use your own ingenuity, for example, if you get a picture of an “accident in city A”, they may have searched for the text of “some incident in city A” to explain the manipulation of the same photo on the Internet.

Everything you see on the Internet is not true

Photoshop images are as old as the Internet itself, and so far many people have been fooled by the manipulated images.

Adobe is also looking for a way to detect Photoshop-tampered images that it has already shown to the media, and it is unclear when, how or in what product it will present it.