Syria: A photoshopped "revolution"

By World Mathaba

Syrian Rebels photoshopping photos from Palestine

A Start-Up Figures Out Photoshop Abuses

Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College, has built a career and a reputation as a leading researcher in digital image forensics. He has made software tools for a number of impressive projects in recent years. One was a pixel-sleuthing program to detect how much fashion photographs have been burnished with Adobe's Photoshop editing program to remove wrinkles and flab, while plumping up lips and breasts. Another was software for the automated detection of child pornography on the Web to help law enforcement agencies.

Mr. Farid has worked with government agencies and companies, but these collaborations have typically been for individual projects. "Research is critical," Mr. Farid said. "But unless you put your ideas into a product, the impact is limited." Mr. Farid is hoping to broaden the reach of his work as co-founder and chief technology officer of a start-up company, Fourandsix Technologies, which is being announced on Tuesday. [...] At a company whose key product has been transmuted into a verb - "to photoshop" - that means to doctor pictures, the technology to authenticate images was not a priority.

At a glance, Fourandsix seems to be in the Photoshop-busting business. Mr. Connor does not see it that way. Photoshop, he said, is "a great tool" - and one that is only misused at times. [...] In law enforcement and photojournalism, Mr. Connor said, there is a clear need for the start-up's product. "There is a business here," he said. "But the open question is what size of a business is it?"

The initial product is for professionals, priced at $890 with an annual fee for updates to the database of digital signatures. (Read more)

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Photoshop and the Syrian crisis

One of the most famous examples of photoshopping during the ongoing foreign-orchastrated Syrian crisis is the photo which appeared in Austria’s largest newspaper Kronen Zeitung on July 28 (first photo below) when readers were treated to the image on the left of bombed out Aleppo. The original photo on the right came from the European Pressphoto Agency and shows a Syrian family that was or wasn’t fleeing for the violence – but the Zionist media moguls apparently needed a more apocalyptic background to communicate their propaganda message against the Syrian government.

In numerous other cases photos of former war zones are used by the media as a propaganda tool in their anti-Assad campaign while photos of pro-government demonstrations in a Hollywood-esque way have been changed into photos of anti-government protestors.