Saturday, June 20, 2015

South Carolina Church Shooting: Were Photos of Dylann Storm Roof Digitally Altered? Disturbing Forensic Evidence

Via comment by Anonymous on Don’t Tear Down the Confederate Battle Flag

 forensic

An open-access website called fotoforensics.com analyzes digital images to detect potential alteration. One of the techniques offered at the site is Error Level Analysis.
According to the site’s tutorial on ELA:

Error Level Analysis (ELA)permits identifying areas within an image that are at different compression levels. With JPEG images, the entire picture should be at roughly the same level. If a section of the image is at a significantly different error level, then it likely indicates a digital modification …

ELA highlights differences in the JPEG compression rate. Regions with uniform coloring, like a solid blue sky or a white wall, will likely have a lower ELA result (darker color) than high-contrast edges. The things to look for:

Edges. Similar edges should have similar brightness in the ELA result. All high-contrast edges should look similar to each other, and all low-contrast edges should look similar. With an original photo, low-contrast edges should be almost as bright as high-contrast edges.

Textures. Similar textures should have similar coloring under ELA. Areas with more surface detail, such as a close-up of a basketball, will likely have a higher ELA result than a smooth surface.

Surfaces. Regardless of the actual color of the surface, all flat surfaces should have about the same coloring under ELA. 

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