Photoshopping missles

I recently saw a Nova episode about Hany Farid about so called "Digital Forensics", that is how to detect and discover photos manipulated digitally. Here are some useful links if you are interested:

www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/

www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0802/digital-forensics-an-interview-with-dr- hany-farid.html

www.wired.com/gadgets/digitalcameras/news/2007/03/72883

Check out this photo which appeared in all the papers yesterday.

When I saw it, I didn't think Photoshop, but I did wonder how we knew that this photo had actually been taken in Iran and recently.

It looked like any number of missile launch photos.

But check this out:

"As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites." (from New York Times Blog)

Ouch. Egg on their face.