Photoshop is great, am I right? Just take a look over at Worth 1000 to see some of the amazig stuff that creative people can forge together. But photo forging can have more serious consequences, escpecially if faked images are used in news reports and other "trustworthy" sources. Well, a couple students from Dartmouth University have created an algorithm that can detect whether a photo is original or has been tampered with. Of course this system isn't likely to be 100% accurate any time soon, and it wouldn't be able to distinguish between cosmetic/aesthetic editing and something more sinister.

But what also interests me personally is the potential to test computer generated artwork for "realness". Currently the state of 3D art is such that most people can tell between real and fake in even the most realistic of CG images. However, I would really like to see the results of this algorithm when it's run over some really good 3D work. Would the system see it as a natural photo because there are no pixel-level glitches or imperfections, or would it see it as too automated to be real?