Iran’s Photoshopped missiles
Clicking on a link from Jens on Twitter, I found myself reading a news report about how Iran fired some missiles and then doctored the images.
What I found funny were the remarks of "photographic experts" stating that the picture "appears" to have been altered, with Gerard Issert, a technician at one of the largest photo laboratories in Paris, telling the paper: "Although the missiles weren't all equidistant from the camera, they're the same size in the picture."
All well and good, but there's a very simple way to prove that the smoke trails were cloned: just fire up Photoshop, blow up the allegedly doctored image (A) by about 500% using nearest-neighbor to preserve the hard edges (C), copy the bit of the smoke trail in the doctored image that looks similar (shown highlighted in C) and paste it over the other smoke trail in difference mode. Et, voilà, you have an almost entirely black rectangle, proving algorithmically that the two areas are identical.
(Just to show you what that section looks like in Difference mode when copied over an area that does contain different content, I also copied it over a piece of the sky in C).
Yay, finally, a use for Difference mode! 
The emergence of picture B, by the way, was apparently what tipped people off to the forgery.
The Iran’s Photoshopped missiles article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
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Clare Lopez
Alex
Erwin Verdonk
William from Lagos
Clarkson
Mario Klingemann
Oh yes - that “photographic experts” part was also the first line that caught my eye. Well, I guess that simply sounds more better than “intern” in a news article. I’m a bit worried though about the poor soul who actually doctored that photo so miserably since his future doesn’t look too bright in a country that offers death sentences for people committing smaller offences - like having a different opinion about politics or religion and blogging about it.
July 13th, 2008 at 12:28 amDaryl Teo
And for something related to this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49403380@N00/2658316482/
Enjoy
July 13th, 2008 at 2:10 pmescee
yep, it’s all honkey dorey until ww3 starts this summer. Im glad that this is at least being discussed, but what about the more sinister underlying possbilities? like the possibility that they knew people would recognize the missiles are photoshopped, then infer that iran’s counterstrike capability is weak, thereby pushing the idiots who think they run the world to actually launch ‘oil snatch attack 2.0′ that they’ve been plotting since 2000… sorry for the rant, but im looking forward to the singularity conference, and i don’t know if it will be possible during world war 3…
July 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pmMike
No fake
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x637ia_shahab3velfecrcom_news
July 16th, 2008 at 4:57 amTom Schavo
This shows how truth is manipulated and shown to the world. What do these people get out of it ya!
July 16th, 2008 at 11:59 amCalivita
True and False can - a normal man does not recognize
July 16th, 2008 at 5:51 pm