Hi! I'm new to this forum and I'd like to know what techniques are usually used to find out if an image is fake or digitally altered. For instance, if you came across a UFO pic or something like that, how would you determine that it's not real?

Thanks in advance.

well i dont think that there are techniques to see it, you just see if it's fake or you don't, nowdays we can produce very realistic fake images with tools like photoshop, and 3d programs, so it's more how good the artist/faker is with his programs. sometimes if you look close you can see things like that the proportions look weird (so that it looks like the ufo is really small, or the houses (if you see any) look fake, or that the edges are blurry, what means that the object isn't cut from his background well, but these are just things which you notice without anyone telling you, and if you don't see any strange things, the image is good faked, or the image isn't fake (wich won't be the case with your ufo image... ;) i hope that helped grd stef

There are methods to determine if there have been modifications done to an image in Photoshop, but quite a few rely on having other supporting images. Most of the detection process deal with examining the pixels/grain at a high magnification.

With technology advancing as it is, it becomes easier to do and harder to detect (for those with the time and talent), but there isn't a "litmus" test.

There are some good articles about this subject on the web, though they deal more with the issues of Ethics of Photo Manipulation and Journalism vs. Marketing

Good subject to think about...

:)
retrocity

Usually faulty lighting is a way to expose a fraudulent pic - ie different elements in the pic a lit from different angles which suggest a cut and paste job.

Thanks. I supposed there were not standard tests to do that. But I found some web sites were UFO fanatics use the relief filter to find out if the UFO has real volume!! :-DD Juan Carlos

Once you've used photoshop for a few years you get so you can pretty much tell when a pic has been shopped. But the best ones are hard to tell.