How to calculate fake photos and not be fooled

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Before sharing an astounding or intimidating image on social media, check to see if it is fake. There are several ways in which you can distinguish a fake from the original.

Find inconsistencies

It is often possible to determine that the image is not real with the naked eye. Missing limbs, extra heads, objects suspiciously hovering in the photo - all this means that they have worked on the picture, and not very talentedly.

Unfortunately for content consumers, image editing tools are improving day by day, so getting a real-looking fake is now as easy as shelling pears. If no evidence is striking, look for less noticeable details in the picture:

• shadows and lighting effects that are clearly out of place;
• different contrast, brightness, color in areas of the photo;
• installation boundaries in the enlarged photo;
• poorly edited text.

Here is a photo taken during the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. Children in T-shirts with letters lined up to make his last name. Craftsmen replaced the inscription Romney with money - money.

Compare with other images

Try to find analogs of a suspicious photo among the pictures on the Internet. This can be done in Google, Yandex (open the "Pictures" tab and click on the camera icon) or on special services like TinEye. Among similar photos, the search engine may offer the original, on the basis of which the fake was made.

If you suspect that the picture is composed of several pictures, divide it into fragments and look for matches again. It is likely that the questionable piece could be taken from another image.

So, it turned out to be a fake photo in which the film crew runs away from the bear. The photo of the animal was taken from stock.

An image search does not necessarily indicate a fake. If the image is found on a reputable media site, it is likely to be true.

Check file details

If you can't tell from the photo for sure whether it is original, dig a little deeper and check the technical information of the file. Hidden metadata should be alarming. Moreover, it is not necessary to look at the information about the file manually; this can be done by a special service, for example Izitru. However, this method does not give a 100% guarantee, since when uploading to the Web, most of the metadata required to authenticate a file disappears.

To identify a fake, you can use filters and layers in the graphics editor. This may be enough to reveal a fake. This was the case with a photo by Singaporean photographer Chai Yu Wei, who won the Nikon competition. The author added an image of a flying plane in the editor.

Knowledge in the field of photography will also help to identify a fake. For example, you can get high-quality photos at night only with a slow shutter speed. If there are fast moving objects in the image that are not blurry, it is most likely fake.

Trust the professionals

Many fake photos have been circulating on the Web for years, appearing on one or another resource. Sites like Snopes and Gizmodo are fighting fakes.