Adobe Systems’ Advanced Technology lab has developed two tools for image authentication. Clone Tool Detector, which determines whether a section in a picture, has been recopied from another part of the picture. It is difficult to predict if two images are cloned, but this tool will say if they are “improbably similar”.
Truth Dots, determines whether pixels are missing from a photo, a sign that the image has been cropped. This cannot be detected by the human eye by zooming the images.
These plugins could be added in the new version of Photoshop, called CS3, which will be announced at the end of March. If so, it would be great for sites like eBay where bidders/buyers can distinguish between real and copied/altered images or for image copyright issues proliferating on the internet!
