Digital Photojournalisim.

Changes have been made in the way we address image manipulation in the press due to legal issues. The Images and Articles from the past are still here however they are not publicly indexed. Links to these pages are still functional.

Detecting Photo Manipulation Just Keeps Getting Harder

Powerful image editing software like Photoshop and computer hardware like ultra high resolution monitors in the hands of skilled digital artists are capable of creating nearly flawless image manipulation. I can be extremely difficult (especially with a low resolution image) to sort out artifacts that are inherent to digital image capture and intentional image tampering.

However we did say nearly flawless image manipulation.

Though under these circumstances it is impossible to say with 100% certainty we believe that this image was not a tasteless staged prank but a carefully crafted propaganda piece.

Tasteless Prank? Also note this is a much lower resoulution than the image inspected.

Below the image shows areas of mismatched pixel density in areas with uniform boundaries. This type of artifact would generally not occur at all and the odds against it occurring multiple times in one sample are well... In the big numbers.