I think if you really wanted an artificial background to replace a removed figure you would use some type of pseudo-random pattern that was adjusted to match the histogram and spatial frequencies of the surrounding area.

No negative, no proof of reality.

In that case, you could never prove reality. How do we know that a negative was produced by being exposed to a real scene rather than to a digital display? We can’t if the display and capture is good enough. Sorry, but anything that’s easily faked in digital is easily reproduced as analog. If you say that digital has to be invalid, so does any analog that hasn’t been verified to have been created prior to the point at which we had to dismiss digital.

All of these digital red light cameras, etc., should be challenged in court as unverifiable, since how can anyone every prove (without a time-stamped, material negative) that the image wasn’t hoaxed? (There’s no “grain”, or mechanical camera “artifacts” to signify when, where, or how the picture was taken, and if any after-the-fact manipulation was done to it.)

I’m surprised no one has challenged this illegitimate medium yet.

Especially when they want to take you money or license away.

I’m a “follow the rules driver”, so I’m not going to be hit by this, but someone needs to contest the invalidity of the digitial image in its entirety, and down to its illusory root.

Same with news photography.

No negative, no proof of reality.

The ease of the method has lulled everyone.

But, with the fauxtography scandals now bubbling up -and, as potentially-Luddite as it might seem- it is time to demand an analog basis to these “news” claims. A microfilm and digital dual-camera for news reporting, fine-demanding images from traffic cameras, etc. should be the law.

If this danger isn’t focused now, we lose one more contact with verifiable truth.

the sides are just–in essence–cloned into the void.

But it isn’t cloned. It’s stretched in those places where stretching would be least noticeable. Thus, although often detectable, I doubt current hoax-detection software would be able to detect it in most instances.

It’s interesting, and it’s new. But if you look really closely at the demos, you can still see where the cuts are. For instance, when the people are removed from the beach, there’s no way to create unique image behind them, so the sides are just–in essence–cloned into the void.

I kind of doubt this’ll be in CS4 either. Adobe isn’t really into innovation these days.

Actually I have a question: Can this kind of technology be applied to digital video as well?

JetBoy on September 4, 2007 at 10:49 AM

Digital video, like film, is still just a sequence of still frames. It’s trickier to manipulate image sequences convincingly as a certain degree of uniformity is required from frame to frame lest we detect the inconsistencies, but in this case I expect it’d be relatively straightforward relative to some of the other manipulations that can already be applied. I don’t know if it could be used convincingly for dynamically resizing, as with the web content still images featured in the video (though maybe), but as a post-processing technique I’d say it’s almost certainly applicable.

I don’t think it’d bring any new capability in that arena, though. It’d just provide some shortcuts.

Blacklake on September 4, 2007 at 11:25 AM

I’d say once this thing get’s incorporated in a program such as After Effects such as. (Sorry had too) Anyone one like After Effects that can track an effect from one frame to the other, making sure that the same type of pixels in an area are removed across all frames then bingo. But it won’t be done on the fly like this. It will have to be rendered. And re-rendered after locking ‘key pixels’ to prevent weirdness from the first render.

- The Cat

P.S. When do they start using this on Hillary’s beach photos? The thighs man the thighs!

My question to it’s authors is; Can one detect it’s use as having been employed on a finished digital picture. (Don’t know if that’s a correct sentence)

Ernest on September 4, 2007 at 9:16 AM

That’s hard to say and would depend on a lot of things: The original picture, how it was changed, whether either the original or the final picture were compressed, etc. I’d venture to guess that it’s not always detectable but often could be. For example, if objects are removed by collapsing followed by stretching, the stretching would cause certain high frequencies to be missing in the low energy paths. While low energy areas generally lack such high frequencies, the need for a path might make this possible. For example, consider the image on the beach. Even the lowest energy portion of the sand will have high frequencies. If I suspected that something were missing in that photograph, I’d analyze the high frequency portions of the sand and find that areas near the people would have higher frequencies than areas away from them, indicating some type of manipulation. Or, if the grains of sand are large enough, some might appear stretched (although perhaps not by enough to detect).

Anyway, it’s harder to check this than to check work by some amateur hack stringer with today’s Photoshop.

The best part is there wasn’t anything there that wouldn’t work for video either. Great for removing unwanted relations from home movies, or jihadis from among a crowd of school kids.

Boooooo on Adobe takeover. …Rubbish, filth, slime, muck…booo…

Adobe is swiftly becoming the Microsoft of graphic software. New versions have minute changes yet cost a fortune and are even more bloated than the last release. (trust me – I use them every day…)

We need some good olde free market competition!

whatthecrap on September 4, 2007 at 11:29 AM

CS to CS2 was crap. The video management upgrades in the CS3 suite are nice, but it does suck that upgrade licensing has become such a racket.

Next version should reanimate lifeless matter.

Blacklake on September 4, 2007 at 11:25 AM

Thanks. I didn’t know if the tech exists to perhaps manipulate one frame in a video, and have it carry throughout the clip. Such as shown here…where an image is changed through negative space so to speak. Couldn’t some software just carry out the same (let’s say) cropping, and apply it to each frame in a film?

meh…either way, the easier it gets to manipulate photos, the more of them I’m sure we’ll see. Or think we see….

Once this widget gets picked up by Adobe for CS4, you won’t need skills or effort to pull it off.

Boooooo on Adobe takeover. …Rubbish, filth, slime, muck…booo…

Adobe is swiftly becoming the Microsoft of graphic software. New versions have minute changes yet cost a fortune and are even more bloated than the last release. (trust me – I use them every day…)

We need some good olde free market competition!

Actually I have a question: Can this kind of technology be applied to digital video as well?

JetBoy on September 4, 2007 at 10:49 AM

Digital video, like film, is still just a sequence of still frames. It’s trickier to manipulate image sequences convincingly as a certain degree of uniformity is required from frame to frame lest we detect the inconsistencies, but in this case I expect it’d be relatively straightforward relative to some of the other manipulations that can already be applied. I don’t know if it could be used convincingly for dynamically resizing, as with the web content still images featured in the video (though maybe), but as a post-processing technique I’d say it’s almost certainly applicable.

I don’t think it’d bring any new capability in that arena, though. It’d just provide some shortcuts.

Image hoax-detection software already exists

That’s true, and it works. It’s what they use to auth images used in court cases.

NOW how many words is a picture worth?

smellthecoffee on September 4, 2007 at 10:33 AM

Still a thousand. They just happen to be worthless Chomskyite ramblings now.