Photoshop, Or Not?

[David Plankton]

I've downloaded a free app which investigates files. It was done by mistake as I really wanted something to read the free pulp fiction magazines from a link that was included in a recent post on the Random Images thread. Anyway....

You select a file and get three options, Basic info, Advanced and Hex Header. I don't know what any of them mean but I tried it on a photo and this came up under Hex Header -

Does the almost complete inclusion of the word 'Photoshop' mean that the image has been manipulated at some point?


This from a photo I know has had nothing done to it, and no mention of said software -

 

[Xanatic*]

Perhaps someone simply used Photoshop to import photos from their camera and save it on the hard drive.

 

[Ermintruder]

Poor coding in the metadata analysis tool, perhaps mistaking a file extension type as a sign of Photoshop editing?

Try using http://www.fotoforensics.com and select the Errror Level Analysis utility. See if it falsely indicates image manipulation via that mechanism as well.

Are you saving the pictures from the camera in a raw uncompressed format, or are you importing them via a utility that forces them to be saved into a specific file-type?

 

[Mythopoeika]

Perhaps someone simply used Photoshop to import photos from their camera and save it on the hard drive.

May have been used to resize it and save it to another file format.

 

[Analogue Boy]

Looks like there's some JFIF info in there. It could have been converted to JPEG in Photoshop.

JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format) is a standard that defines a portable subset of the JPEGfile format. Most of the JPEG files in existence conform to JFIF.

JFIF defines JPEG application segments which serve to identify JFIF files, and to store a small amount of metadata: the pixel density, and a thumbnail image.

The presence of a JFIF segment implies that:

• If the image has three components, its color format is YCbCr, using a conversion formula given in the specification. If it has one component, its color format is grayscale.
• The image has a particular orientation.
• If the image is subsampled, it uses a particular subsampling position.

JFIF was developed based on a draft version of the JPEG standard, which is how it can predate JPEG's official 1992 publication date.

 

[David Plankton]

Thanks everyone.

Judging by your comments, it's probably not something you'd be able to find out using a free app. Photoshop is something I've never used, despite having been into cameras and computers for 20 years now. I've never thought of it as simple camera software, but always as something to manipulate images with. It's got itself a bit of a bad name in that respect.

Try using http://www.fotoforensics.com and select the Errror Level Analysis utility. See if it falsely indicates image manipulation via that mechanism as well.

Are you saving the pictures from the camera in a raw uncompressed format, or are you importing them via a utility that forces them to be saved into a specific file-type?

I tried this and I'm afraid it meant nothing to me. The photo in question wasn't one I took and is quite old by technological standards.

 

[gattino]

I adjust almost everything in photoshop, simply in terms of resizing, cropping or brightening an image, so it rarely involves (unless obvious) "faking" anything such as making someone slimmer or prettier or in the grasp of a yeti.

 

[OneWingedBird]

I adjust almost everything in photoshop, simply in terms of resizing, cropping or brightening an image, so it rarely involves (unless obvious) "faking" anything such as making someone slimmer or prettier or in the grasp of a yeti.

I do pretty much the same but with Photostudio 5, think it came free with a hardware scanner a few years back and I've just hung onto it. Pretty much everything I post on the internet will have been at least resized and probably cropped and lighting tweaked, so yeah, doesn't necessarily mean the image was tampered with per se.

 

[Peripart]

I adjust almost everything in photoshop, simply in terms of resizing, cropping or brightening an image, so it rarely involves (unless obvious) "faking" anything such as making someone slimmer or prettier or in the grasp of a yeti.

You're lucky. I regularly have to use Photoshop to get rid of the Yeti in my pictures. Bloomin' menace, they are, the great big hairy photobombing gits...