It is often possible to determine that an image is not real with the naked eye. Missing limbs, extra heads, objects suspiciously hanging in the photo — all this means that they worked on the picture, and not very talented.
Unfortunately for content consumers, image editing tools are improving day by day, so getting a real-looking fake is now easier than ever. If no evidence catches your eye, look for less noticeable details in the picture:
Here is a photo taken during the election campaign of Mitt Romney, who is running for president of the United States in 2012. Children in T-shirts with letters lined up to make his last name. Craftsmen replaced the Romney inscription with money — money.
Try to find analogues of a suspicious photo among the pictures on the Internet. You can do this in Google, Yandex (open the tab "Pictures" and click on the camera icon) or special services like TinEye. Among similar photos, the search engine may offer the original, on the basis of which the fake was made.
If there is a suspicion that the picture is made up of several images, divide it into fragments and look for matches again. It is likely that the questionable piece may have been taken from another image.
So, the photo turned out to be fake, in which the film crew runs away from the bear. The photo of the animal was taken from stock.
A picture search will not necessarily indicate a fake. If an image is found on a media site with a good reputation, it is likely that it is true.
If you cannot tell for sure from the photo whether it is original, dig a little deeper and check the technical information of the file. Hidden metadata should be a warning. Moreover, it is not necessary to view the information about the file manually, special services can do this, for example Izitru. However, this method does not provide an absolute guarantee, since when uploaded to the Network, most of the metadata necessary for file authentication disappears.
To identify a fake, you can use filters and layers in the graphics editor. This may be enough to identify a fake. This happened with a picture by Singaporean photographer Chai Yu Wei, who won the Nikon competition. The author added an image of a flying plane in the editor.
Knowledge in the field of photography will also help to identify a fake. For example, you can only get high-quality photos at night with a long shutter speed. If there are fast-moving objects in the image that are not blurred, it is most likely a fake.
Many fake photos have been circulating on the Web for years, popping up on one or another resource. Sites like Snopes and Gizmodo are fighting fakes.
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