Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College, has built a career and a
reputation as a leading researcher in digital image forensics. He has
made software tools for a number of impressive projects in recent years.
According to
Worldmathaba
Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College, has built a career and a
reputation as a leading researcher in digital image forensics. He has
made software tools for a number of impressive projects in recent years.
One was a pixel-sleuthing program to detect how much fashion
photographs have been burnished with Adobe's Photoshop editing program
to remove wrinkles and flab, while plumping up lips and breasts. Another
was software for the automated detection of child pornography on the
Web to help law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Farid has worked with
government agencies and companies, but these collaborations have
typically been for individual projects. "Research is critical," Mr.
Farid said. "But unless you put your ideas into a product, the impact is
limited." Mr. Farid is hoping to broaden the reach of his work as
co-founder and chief technology officer of a start-up company,
Fourandsix Technologies, which is being announced on Tuesday. [...] At a
company whose key product has been transmuted into a verb - "to
photoshop" - that means to doctor pictures, the technology to
authenticate images was not a priority.
At a glance, Fourandsix
seems to be in the Photoshop-busting business. Mr. Connor does not see
it that way. Photoshop, he said, is "a great tool" - and one that is
only misused at times. [...] In law enforcement and photojournalism, Mr.
Connor said, there is a clear need for the start-up's product. "There
is a business here," he said. "But the open question is what size of a
business is it?"
The initial product is for professionals, priced at $890 with an annual fee for updates to the database of digital signatures.
Photoshop and the Syrian crisisOne
of the most famous examples of photoshopping during the ongoing
foreign-orchastrated Syrian crisis is the photo which appeared in
Austria’s largest newspaper Kronen Zeitung on July 28 (first photo
below) when readers were treated to the image on the left of bombed out
Aleppo. The original photo on the right came from the European
Pressphoto Agency and shows a Syrian family that was or wasn’t fleeing
for the violence – but the Zionist media moguls apparently needed a more
apocalyptic background to communicate their propaganda message against
the Syrian government.
In numerous other cases photos of former
war zones are used by the media as a propaganda tool in their anti-Assad
campaign while photos of pro-government demonstrations in a
Hollywood-esque way have been changed into photos of anti-government
protestors.