Image Forensics: More on tamper detection

Steve Eddins (Mathworks Inc., USA), writing on his company-sponsored blog on image processing, has an excellent post regarding an article by Professor Henry Farid in the June 2008 edition of Scientific American (USA, center-left, scientific magazine). The article is primarily about tamper detection or, in other words, spotting retouching or "photoshopping" of photographs.

Image Forensics: How to spot photo retouching

Slate (US, center-left online magazine) has an article (Were the Dove ads retouched? How to spot Photoshop chicanery) on some of the techniques used in identifying if a image has been retouched. In a forensic examination of evidence, this procedure is known as tamper detection. It should be noted that the author, Jacob Leibenluft, reached out to several experts while researching the topic, including George Reis of Imaging Forensics.

Enjoy!

Image Forensics: New Best Practices Document for Forensic Video Analysis

The committer members over at SWGIT (Scientific Working Group on Imaging Technology) have been very busy lately. Following the recent release of two new sections for review, they have now added another - Best Practices for Forensic Video Analysis. It and other documents can be found be found by following this link.

Human Auditory System: Voice Risk Analysis

The Economist (UK, center-left economics and news magazine) has a short article in the May 8th, 2008 edition on Voice Risk Analysis, which is another name for Voice Stress Analysis or Micro-Stress Analysis. You might recall from my previous posts (here and here) on this topic that I believe voice stress analysis to be a workable interrogation tool, when correctly administered, but then, so again can the copy machine in the hallway - it all depends on whether the subject is, or can be made to be, concerned about it. It is not, however, a lie detector. This author of the Economist's article seems to have come to a similar conclusion.

An interesting point in the article is that, at least in one real-world deployment of a commercial system, the biggest benefit was gained from simply telling the claimants that such a system would be used on them - which caused many to drop their claims prior to being "analyzed" by the system.

Computer Audio: Latest Audacity beta is released

From the Audacity announcement:

The Audacity Team is pleased to announce the release of Audacity 1.3.5 (beta) for Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix. Changes include improvements and new features for recording, import/export and the user interface. Because it is a work in progress and does not yet come with complete documentation or translations into foreign languages, it is recommended for more advanced users. For all users, Audacity 1.2.6 is a stable release, complete and fully documented. You can have Audacity 1.2.6 and 1.3.5 installed on the same machine.

Enjoy!

Medical: Overview of Synesthesia

Synesthesia is always a popular topic on this blog, judging by the number of hits it gets. In case you don't already know, synesthesia is a medical condition where the stimulation of one sense (such as smell) or cognitive pathway (such as interpreting numbers) gets merged with another sense or cognitive pathway. One commonly occurring example of synesthesia is the seeing of numbers with different colors. For an interesting and informative overview, see this write-up in Interesting Thing of The Day (ITOTD). Enjoy!