A

Anonymous

Answered

Has This Photo Been Edited?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 11, 2017
8 replies
2567 views

I have some experience with Photoshop and other photo editing software. However, I would the opinions of people here on this matter: has this photograph been edited in any fashion?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Theresa J

Yeah it's been edited, but the image is so low res that it is difficult to tell how much editing or why. Something looks wrong with the right foot of the guy in question. Look at the space between his foot and the shovel. Looks like half his foot is missing. There are also some repeated patterns usually caused from cloning along the right edge.

D Fosse

Community Expert

I absolutely sympathize with your concerns. Wish I could help you.

But again, there's nothing in the image that even suggests it has been tampered with. Sorry.

Eternal Warrior

Inspiring

http://www.stopfake.org/en/13-online-tools-that-help-to-verify-the-authenticity-of-a-photo/

Also try using the Foto Forensics...

But like others said all this isn't an exact science...

^^My two cents...

D Fosse

Community Expert

Still...

Take a look at the shadows, here exaggerated with Curves. Is it likely that these purplish color casts would match this closely, if it was a random composite from separate images? No way. They would have to be made to match - and if it's worked over at this high level of precision, then there's no way to conclude either way.

People watch too much TV. The idea out there is that it's always possible to spot a fake image, all you have to do is push the "enhance" button enough times. But in reality, it's just one pixel next to another. If you know what you're doing, you can always cover your tracks completely. If the image is important, for any reason, it may well be worth the effort.

Bottom line - there's no smoking gun here. Nothing points to a manipulated image. It can still be fake, but in that case so expertly done as to be undetectable.

Even looking for jpeg artifact patterns is futile if it was done before downsampling/saving out to jpeg.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Well, I can't see anything wrong here.

light and shadows look entirely consistent - the darker clothing just makes the shadows appear darker.
the length of the man's shadow is consistent with his height.
to me, the shadows seem to follow the ground contour well.
the foot is fine - there's just a pile of dirt in front of it.
there's no patch on the shoulder - just a faint line on the wall.

And a frequent giveaway for composites, is local color casts, especially in the shadows. This is often very clearly seen with a curves layer on top. There's not a trace of that here - just a faint purple shadow cast that is entirely consistent.

If this is fake, it's done by an expert who thought of everything.

grauenwölfe

Inspiring

Well, I can't see anything wrong here.
light and shadows look entirely consistent - the darker clothing just makes the shadows appear darker.
the length of the man's shadow is consistent with his height.
to me, the shadows seem to follow the ground contour well.
the foot is fine - there's just a pile of dirt in front of it.
there's no patch on the shoulder - just a faint line on the wall.

Completely agree with each item. The length of the shadows is entirely consistent when factoring in the camera lens and the focal length (and the perspective distortion associated with them). Only thing slightly odd to me is the Moiré pattern on the walls - really looks like when a camera captures the telecine process off a TV. No big deal if it is from a TV, just weird if it's not.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

Only thing slightly odd to me is the Moiré pattern on the walls - really looks like when a camera captures the telecine process off a TV. No big deal if it is from a TV, just weird if it's not.

Could the house front feature corrugated bricks or tiles?

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

I'd say the two on the right were added. Their shadows are much darker than the others and don't follow the contour of the ground very well. The back of her feet look odd: not cut out right, too dark for the sun hitting that side. There's a large beige mark above his shoulder that goes into the window in the background - looks like something wasn't masked out right. The shadow on his face is at a much more pronounced angle than the others in the image, which seems more frontal lighting.

A

Anonymous

Very insightful comments. Thank you all. I'm fairly certain that the original image is from elsewhere, at an earlier date, and the man on the far left is a local TV newscaster: the original was from the groundbreaking of a charitable project. I do suspect the two people on the far right were added--see the people on the FB profile. The author of the article--who is also credited with the photo--is un-contactable; the newspaper credited has no such article on file. The FB profile reminds me of a fake profile from a Nigerian-type scam I'd encountered: a group of photos from the same timeframe, nonsense on the wall. I suspect a scam, and have brought my concerns to several law enforcement parties. When I say 'several,' it's because Canada is unlike any G7 country, in that there is no sole Federal authority under which securities or real estate fraud falls within the purview of. In the real estate and development world here, massive frauds aren't uncommon, and more improbable things have gone on than what I'm suspecting--Google "Riaz Mamdani"+"Concrete Equities"+"shooting"+Rolls Royce"+"Titanic" for a story that's to bizarre to believe.

The project in question involves a large plot of land, part of the local wetlands system, which wasn't considered developable even in the 1950s, when nobody was environmentally aware. Basically, creek and stormwater foods the area, and there is no way to fix this. The original owners (a local ranching family) kept it as a low-end golf course for years, because there was nothing else that could be done about it. Most of the local residents are up in arms at the destruction of six hundred mature trees and a basically undeveloped wetlands habitat, but oddities involving the corporate structures of the three associated firms (a developer, and two brokerages, operating out of a condo in another Province), and the purported identity of the CEO were the red flags that caught my eye. At any rate, maybe some of you would be interested in seeing the area in question. I snapped these pics in the summer of 2013, with a Fuji P&S camera, no editing save for resizing them 25%:

hans-g.

Legend

Hello

--------- my answer became ignored, so I deleted it ---------

Hans-Günter

Theresa J

Correct answer

Community Expert

Yeah it's been edited, but the image is so low res that it is difficult to tell how much editing or why. Something looks wrong with the right foot of the guy in question. Look at the space between his foot and the shovel. Looks like half his foot is missing. There are also some repeated patterns usually caused from cloning along the right edge.

A

Anonymous

Thank you for your reply. My experience with Photoshop has been years ago, in my university years, and I wanted the opinions of people immersed in the use of photo editing software to check against my suspicions. This firm operates out of a residential condo (same address and landline as two brokerages), and the picture is of the CEO. This firm (<CDN$100,000 annual revenue, one employee) is currently involved in a couple of unfinished pre-sold low-rise condos, but nothing of the scale of the current project. This involves as much as a billion dollars and a site that is basically undevelopable owing to environmental and flooding issues--it is essentially a floodplain swamp with a vaulted creek under it, that the firm bought for a fire-sale price in what was then a very overheated market.

There are indeed some odd things with this project, including the purported identity of the CEO. The article I got the photo from only exists on the developer's page, and the original does not exist on the source newspaper's archives, nor was in the print edition: http://mapleprojectsinc.com/index.php/news I am unable to contact the credited photographer. More photos of this person are here: https://web.facebook.com/ajay.nehru.14?_rdr The picture of this person in the restaurant is used in this developer's press photos: http://www.theprovince.com/Ajay+Nehru+president+Maple+Projects/9428058/story.html Note the timeline of the Facebook page, and that the pictures all seem to be from one timeframe. People who have claimed to have met this person qualified this by stating that they thought it was the same person in these photos.

gener7

Community Expert

Your description of the proposed project sounds like bad news on its' own. I suppose proof of photo-editing a self insert with intention to deceive would close the case. It might be the pixels, but his left hand around the woman's shoulder looks clipped. No chance of questioning others in the picture?

grauenwölfe

Inspiring

Looks like someone photographed it from a TV screen.

N. Korea is actually known to edit their leaders into images quite often. Love the backwards shadow.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Not that I can see, but Google reverse image search found the original!

Do you have a particular area of interest? What is it that you suspect might be wrong? It all looks good to me, but I am mainly looking at the people.