Image retouching detection tool

Wired reports: [edited]

A new photograph-analyzing tool quantifies changes made by digital airbrushers in the fashion and lifestyle industry, where image alteration has become the norm.

In a Nov. 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, Farid and doctoral student Eric Kee debut a computational model developed by analyzing 468 sets of original and retouched photographs. From these, Farid and Kee distilled a formal mathematical description of alterations made to models' shapes and features. Their model then scored each altered photograph on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 signifying heavy retouching.

To validate the scores, Farid and Kee then asked 50 people randomly picked through Amazon's Mechanical Turk task outsourcing service to evaluate the photographs. Computational and human scores matched closely. "Now what we have is a mathematical measure of photo retouching," said Farid. "We can predict what an average observer would say."

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Brett's 2p'orth: The full article is worth a browse, especially the 'before/after' image examples.
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