Photoshop question.

[CrispyQ]

When people say that a photo looks like it's been Photoshopped, what are the signs? Can one determine if a photo has been altered by just looking at it? Or do you have to view the photo through an app like Photoshop to tell? Even then, can you tell for certain that it's been altered?

Somewhere out there, there's a photo of Bush flipping the bird. I've always thought his bird finger looked much longer than it would be & that the photo was altered, but of all the times that photo has been posted on DU, I've never read DUer suggest that it was Photoshopped.

Just curious. ;)

[canetoad]

1. Lots of ways to tell

If it's something like a finger that has been cut and pasted, I would look at the lighting - is it consistent with the rest of the photo? Look for signs of cutting, ie. stray pixels around the edge that don't belong.

You don't need Photoshop to find out - any image viewer will do it, but by the time the pic gets onto the net it will be turned into a .jpeg and reduced in size, making it harder to examine closely as all you see will be blocky pixels. The photoshop native file format is .psd and as a rule, these are not posted online. Even if they were, there is no guarantee that the separate layers would be available to view.

After using Photoshop, you can recognise the signs of photo-manipulation carried out using the Photoshop tools and filters. If you have a link to the pic, why not post it here and we can have a good hard look at it.

[CrispyQ]

4. Evidently the Bush photo is real - see post below yours for actual video footage.

I was curious because there was a post on the greatest page yesterday of a young Iranian woman standing in front of Ahmadinejad's car, flipping him off. A few DUer's suggested it was photoshopped. I was curious what made them suspect that. Unfortunately, I can't find the thread now, but I'll keep looking.

Thanks for the info.

[Why Syzygy]

2. It's from an authentic video ..

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/bushvideos/youtube/bushfingerflip.htm

[CrispyQ]

3. Wow, it is real.

Not that I ever questioned that he would behave that way! :eyes:

Thanks for posting.

[Warpy]

5. You can do it with the picture viewer

just keep clicking on zoom. A Photoshopped image will usually show a different pixel count over the area that's been shopped in.