Revealing fakes

Reading the Habr, I came across an article about the demise of the Internet with an attached scan of tariffs, which, apparently, should have put an end to the worldwide network. Not really going into the polemic in the comments, I noticed that the scan is an ordinary fake, and of poor quality. After spending ten minutes parsing the picture, I published the result .

Several Habra users asked to clarify some points in the separation of grains from the chaff.

In general, there is nothing wrong with editing images in Photoshop, but sometimes the goal is to cheat. In this short article with examples, I will try to tell how it is possible to distinguish a fake of low quality in a few minutes (there is no question about high-quality fakes - they even manage to pay with fake money)

So, I conditionally divided the distinguishing features of a fake into two groups:

1. Technical flaws

Here the main emphasis is on the fact that there are not so many methods of “fixing” the image in Photoshop, and when used carelessly, they give out a fake with his head.
Take Beckham. We’ll remove the picture from the T-shirt, put a dove on his shoulder ( it turns out that it’s difficult to make a picture with signs of a fake ) Update: reduced the picture and made a link

Item 1. The stamp tool

Cloning of a piece of image is noticeable. This is done in order to hide something in the original image. With careless use, it turns out as in the example - a bunch of identical pieces. In some cases, the same pieces can be located in different parts of the image. It is recognized by the eyes.

Item 2. Uncleaned pieces

Inattentively, the photoshopper-villain :) may not remove some piece of the source. Clear spots of foreign origin or contours are noticeable.

Point 3. Overdone

Also, by inattention, there may be noticeable signs of excessive zeal in cleaning the picture from unnecessary parts.

Item 4. Implants

A poorly implanted image implant produces a cutout outline (here you can see a pixel “ladder”) and a different color balance, due to which the implant looks alien. Recognized by twisting the contrast and brightness in Photoshop.
It is worth noting that the implant picture may have a different degree of jpeg compression, different from the compression ratio of the source. To mask this, the picture is either washed or saved with maximum compression (up to the appearance of jpeg compression artifacts). It is recognized in Photoshop by twisting the Saturation slider (Ctrl + U) to the maximum. The same method helps to catch glamorous beauties from numerous dating sites in the use of Photoshop ("No, it's true I'm so beautiful, no photoshop"). In the same way, “scans” of documents and medical certificates are cut off.

Point 5. All the same carelessness

The pigeon has no shadow. This mainly refers to the second group of fake signs, but it is worth saying that the mismatch of shadows, highlights, reflections with the light source is still a gross technical error. Recognized by attention to detail.

2. This is a glitch in the matrix, Neo

The second group includes effects that could not appear in a real picture, even kill yourself. With a perfectly licked picture - the photoshopper suffers from a lack of observation and understanding of the physical (technical, anatomical, geographical and other :) aspects of reality. “Wrong” lighting, violation of perspective, the Ostankino tower in Tambov, twisted fingers of a person and all in the same spirit. This requires attention and, to some extent, erudition.