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Scientific Publication Condemns Photo-Manipulation 85
valdean writes "According to a recent article in the New York Times (registration and short biography required) scientific journals have begun to respond to a growing problem of photo-manipulation in submitted manuscripts. At The Journal of Cell Biology, a test developed in 2002 revealed that 25 percent of all accepted manuscripts had one or more illustrations that were manipulated to the point of violating the journal's guidelines. Examples included the duplication of images for re-presentation as a control experiment, making pictures prettier with the clone stamp tool, use of the contrast tool to hide data, and merging portions of several images so that they appear to be a single image. How were many of these scientists caught? They submitted layered Adobe Photoshop files that showed exactly what they had done."
Question (Score:2)
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest roadblock to telling whether an image is real or not is time, in my opinion. If you generally trust the person providing the photos and they're not too unbelievable, you probably won't spend time trying to figure out whether it's reliable or not.
Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a prior slashdot posting [slashdot.org] about mathematical techniques to identify photo manipulation. And another article [oemagazine.com] detailing some techniques.
Re:Question (Score:1)
Re:Question (Score:2)
Because all the sharp scientists think misrepresenting experimental data is an integral part of the scientific method. Sorry, but most scientists are not brilliant Einsteins. They are guys trying to make a living and there is significant pressure to get published and the design/conduct "successful" e
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
So, my original statement is completely true, most of the photos were doctored strictly to make them look better, not for fraud. I never said there was no fraud, only that most of the submitters didn't care if they got caught altering pictures, because they only did it for aesthetics.
Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)
Generally, image manipulation will leave a signature of some sort on the file - do a fourier transform (view the image as frequency data as opposed to spatial) and you can see some of them pretty clearly. They generally show up as very low or very high frequency noise distributed more or less uniformly around the origin. Then there's edge detection; most computer-based photo manipulation creates or erodes edges and a basic edge detection algorithm will show the problem to most human observers.
As mentioned by others, a low quality original can make it much harder to detect manipulation.
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
I am a photographer more than I am a scientist. To what degree would the digital darkroom techniques that I routinely practice be considered fraudulent by scientific journals?
Re:Question (Score:2)
Use of a little unsharp masking: this is the digital equivalent of tweaking the focus of the enlarger in a chemical darkroom-- a practice that I believe was very common in the days of chemical microphotography
It is the digital equivalent - but unfortunately, in this case, the digital equivalent of an analogue process introduces severe aliasing artifacts, and can actually create or destroy spurious signals with repeated use - most scientists frown heavily
could parent clarifiy? (Score:1)
What exactly do you mean by "high freq. noise
I thought most un-altered images would have strong low-frequency components (as the image is likely to have some "average" intensity that is non-zero). Perhaps the lack of high-frequency n
Answer (Score:2)
The last two lines of the article:
Layered Photoshop files contain a history of the file.
Never mind. I'm wrong. (Score:2)
Sad really. (Score:3, Funny)
NeoThermic
Re:Sad really. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sad really. (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. It sounds like, though, that most of the incidents here were more like if you included your foot in the bottom of the picture of the rock and edited it out. The editors said that only a very small subset of the violations were deliberate attempts at fraud.
OT - NYTimes site actually showed me the article! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:OT - NYTimes site actually showed me the articl (Score:1)
Not really the worst (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the attitude. If they think that modifying these images isn't unetherical, then how about the data? And how will you ever catch those people? It's just a sad state of affairs in this scientific community.
Re:Not really the worst (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not really the worst (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and if the US gov't publicly released PDFs of documents with the "secret stuff" censored out by merely drawing an opaque black box over it, leaving the actual classified text still present in the PDF, then they probably were not actually concerned with security.
Never underestimate people's capacity for computer ignorance.
Re:Not really the worst (Score:2)
Probably depends on how the images are modified. If I take a series of images and combine them to form one large image, I don't see a problem with that. It allows people to see the full picture at once. If I take them and erase one thing or add something that wasn't there to begin with, that is something else entirely. It all depends on the modifications.
Not layered images (Score:5, Informative)
From the article, it sounds like the editors just fool around with brightness and contrast of submitted images, and that often reveals the discontinuities from an edit. However, the specifics are not in the article, so don't jump to conclusions.
Re:Not layered images (Score:2)
You are aware you're posting on slashdot, right?
Re:Not layered images (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not layered images (Score:2)
I don't see what the big deal is. (Score:2, Interesting)
Photoshopping germs to look better for journals couldn't be any worse than photoshopping models to look better for magazine covers.
There's a difference... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's a difference... (Score:1)
Well, you've identified the problem. Now let's do something about it!
Re:There's a difference... (Score:1)
Except possibly kittens.
Re:There's a difference... (Score:3, Funny)
But if they were, imagine the demand for jobs in pharma and medical research.
Glad this came up (Score:5, Interesting)
When it came time to see the submitted photos I took my parents along so they could see how my prints stacked up to the others.
Of the roughly 30 prints that were submitted there were at least two I was sure had been manipulated and possibly one more. The one case was blatant. The submitter had done a poor cut and paste of a wood duck. The other was the merging of two photos which produced a very nice looking picture.
As more and more people use digital cameras and then PhotoShop (or other programs) the 'art' of photography goes away since the original photo can so easily be manipulated. Unlike in traditional photography where the negative or slide is the original and any manipulation of that original can be easily seen.
Personally I would like to see photo contests have two separate categories. One for film cameras and one for digital with the understanding that the digital photo may have been manipulated in a way beyond what traditional photos can be. Like the article I'm not talking about enhancing contrast since that can be done with different paper or chemical process for film photos but rather the addition or subtraction of wholesale items.
Yes, adding and removing objects from a film photo can be done but it is more labor-intensive and harder to pull off than with a photo manipulation program.
Granted, if people would just be honest about what they submit we wouldn't have to have this discussion but the same could be said about laws or notices to not do something.
Re:Glad this came up (Score:2)
One for film cameras and one for digital
There won't be film cameras anymore in the future, I think. Nikon already went all digital, IIRC.
Re:Glad this came up (Score:3, Interesting)
Olympus hasn't made a film camera in roughly a decade but myself and others still use them.
Maybe in the distant future, something like 200 years, film cameras will no longer be used but for the forseeable future film will still be with us. Not to mention slides which give better color saturation than any film can.
Re:Glad this came up (Score:1)
I bet it's 10 years and then the cost will become too high for 95% of film photographers.
Re:Glad this came up (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, IANAP(hotographer) and the furthest I ever got with it was one B&W class at a community college, but it seems to me that the color quality is actually a secondary issue. It's well-known
Re:Glad this came up (Score:1)
We can already do this with simple email and public key encryption. ("signed messages" that let you see the message). I guess it's just a matter of the "general
Canon calls theirs the DVK-E2. (Score:2)
Now, when it'll come t
Re:Canon calls theirs the DVK-E2. (Score:1)
Our photo society already does this. (Score:2)
I entered a time-composite of over about 90 minutes at dawn. The left edge was half an hour before sunrise, the right edge was an hour after sunrise, and by dissolving through about 30 frames, I created an even
reminds me of an older complaint (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, so it was a little before my time, but I seem to remember hearing that the whole idea that photography could even be an art form was rejected at first, especially by painters. Frankly, while I'm willing to concede that photography most certainly can be art, it seems to me that digital image manipulation provides at least as much, and possibly far more, room for artistic expression.
Seems to me like there's a bit of poetic justice here. (Is poetic justice a form of art?) I bet there's a bunch of dead painters who would (if they could) be rolling around laughing at the irony of a photographer complaining about people who take advantage of technology to make their art "too easily".
Re:reminds me of an older complaint (Score:1)
Sigh, I never have mod points when I need them...Insightful!
Re: reminds me of an older complaint (Score:2)
Yeah, until they started seeing pictures of naked ladies. Then most of them ran out and bought a camera.
Re:Glad this came up (Score:2)
But the "art" takes a whack from every significant step forward in technology. As operating systems got easier to use, noobs got more
Are you just starting? (Score:2)
A good part of the "art' of photography has always been in the processing of the print! For instance a lot of Wedding photographers still use film because they have labs that can process the film just right. All you need to do is take some professional negatives and have them develope
Re:Glad this came up (Score:2)
That's actually a really bad way of distinguishing whether a photo has been manipulated. Digital photographs can be presented 'as is' (as much as digital can be), and film photos can still be manipulated. A lot of things can be done in the darkroom. And then there's people like myself, who have 'gone back' to film
Re:Glad this came up (Score:2)
Umm, no. You *ARE* aware that modern photo-printers, atleast those that normal mortals use generally work by *scanning* the film, and then *printing* the resulting file the same way they would print a file coming from a digital camera ?
The fact that one file comes from a CCD, and the other file from a scan of a negative makes no difference for the d
When they claimed breakthroughs in "cloning..." (Score:1)
...I'll get me coat.
long-time medical technique / joke (Score:2)
Allowed Image Manipulations (Score:5, Informative)
The actual article is a bit more nuanced:
If a researcher manipulates only part of an image then the researcher is implicitly admitting that there was something in the image that they chose to ignore. On the other hand, if a researcher changes the contrast of the whole image to make it easier to see the patterns they are drawing their conclusions from, then they can always claim they really didn't notice the other stuff. Essentially, researchers have to avoid doing things that prove that they were deliberately dishonest.
Re:Allowed Image Manipulations (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't discount the possibility that there was nothing else interesting to see either. Scientists are not all dishonest!
Disclaimer: I am a scientist.
Re:Allowed Image Manipulations (Score:1)
On the other hand, I can see why a researcher might do this, given the fame, pressure to produce and the dollar amounts involved. This is similar to the Korean DNA/cloning scandal - He fudged hi
Re:Allowed Image Manipulations (Score:2)
Having worked in a field whe
Moral of the Story (Score:3, Insightful)
(OK, not really, but you know some people of less-than-sterling ethics are going to walk away with that instead of the real lesson, i.e. don't fudge your data.)
Solution: watermarking (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I can think of ways to get around this like rephotographing a manipulated image so I don't think you could stop a dete
Re:Solution: watermarking (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately it also raises privacy issues. While you're talking about implementing the quasi-steganographic approach for a limited subset of camera models (I'm assuming here we're talking about the CCDs used to photograph off microscope feeds) I'm sure it wouldn't be too long until the watermarks started appearing in consumer camera models.
A little less tinfoil-ish consideration is that any watermarking done to the image is necessarily a manipulation of the image, and doing it on the hardware level pre
Rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)
Before photographing the item it lit, framed, lensed, exposed, and captured at a point in time. Plenty of room for manipulation.
So what's the difference between physical manipulation before the capture and digital manipulation after?
There is only honesty and dishonesty. Manipulation is a given.
Re:Rubbish (Score:2)
The real manipulation in such photographs comes at print time. I'm not sure how that works with color - I didn't ta
Altered photos are a GOOD thing... IF (Score:4, Insightful)
When studying a scientific photo, I don't want to be distracted by less-interesting bits of information - I want my attention drawn to the point the author is trying to make.
You only have a problem if the reader thinks he is looking at one thing when in fact he is looking at something else.
Re:Altered photos are a GOOD thing... IF (Score:2)
This is a scientific paper -- it should include unmanipulated data to let others come to their own conclusions. Cropping is one thing, since people reading the paper will know that there will be data outside of the field of view. Manipulating within an image is an entirely different proposition.
Re:Altered photos are a GOOD thing... IF (Score:2)
Re:Altered photos are a GOOD thing... IF (Score:2)
Old News (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Old News (Score:2)
Re:Old News (Score:1, Interesting)
First off, let me say that I am *not* the above Anonymous Coward.
Secondly let me say that while the "auto-levels" tool was only applied to the eyes, that was not all that was done. Simple application of the "auto-levels" tool to the eyes alone (as selected by the lasso tool will not repeat will not create the "demon Condi" effect.
Working with a 450x384 source image (which BTW scales down exactly to the 180x142 pixels of the "demon Condi" image when the C
And... (Score:2)
And one of the great disadvantages to the blogosphere is that it's called the blogosphere.
AFP uses fish-eye lens (Score:2)
And sometimes it's more blatant than Photoshopping. An Agence France-Presse journalist used a fisheye lens [take-a-pen.org] to exaggerate damage done to a terrorist's house by the IDF. Here's my JE about it. [slashdot.org]
Re:AFP uses fish-eye lens (Score:2)
Blame the article. The article called it a "fisheye lens".
What the fuck is inappropriate about using a wide angle lens?
It distorts the picture. While certainly a dramatic photo, it still distorts the image. News photos should be objective statements of record, not artistic pieces designed to manipulate emotions.
automatic manipulation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, the problem is that there isn't room in a scientific paper to put dozens of images proving your point. When you're given 3 pages, you select the best image or two that you have. Ultimately, an editor or reviewer can ask for supplemental information if there is any doubt in the result. Perhaps the problem is that reviewers aren't asking to see (or people are not providing) the supplimental data which a good scientist uses to determine truth.
All the more reason... (Score:1)
Cooking the Books (Score:1)
However, if there are major manipulations to an image that border fraud, one has to wonder how many of the numbers are pretend.
That really was bigfoot in the photo.
Photoshop 10 forbids photo manipulation (Score:5, Funny)
"There were numerous reports about photo manipulation in manuscripts from the scientific community. Few years back, when the government asked us to forbid opening images with scanned banknotes in them due to possibility for money conterfeiting, we responded and implemented the appropriate algorithms to comply. With this release, we're just taking the next step."
Among the features unaffected in Photoshop 10 remain zooming in/out and panning.
According to Adobe, Photoshop 10 will be available to purchase at retailers world-wide early next month.
Re: (Score:2)