The art of faked photos is as old as photography itself. The age of the printed picture gave birth to the age of photographic hoaxes almost immediately. This unsung art form has been used by the media, governments, cults, and conspiracy theorists to promote various kinds of propaganda in the last century, and the age of the internet has only advanced the proliferation of faked photographs.

With the digital age has come the software and technology that makes the faking of pictures easier than ever. If you have any background in photography or enough time spent using Adobe Photoshop, you will already be aware of what I am saying. It does not take an expert eye to spot the techniques that give away a fake from the real thing. Keep in mind some fakes are very well done, and in some cases may not be detectible without more elaborate image analysis.

Getting a little familiar with the more popular editing software will give you more of an eye for faking techniques. Most basic manipulations can be done with nothing more advanced than the photo editors available as part of any Windows operating system software.

Some forms of manipulation are almost too blatantly obvious, once you know to look for them. Even so the following tips are usable to discover many of the internet fakes and frauds.

Blurring when examined more closely will show signs of variation that are unnatural to the naked eye; the pixilation will be too varied usually. Also blurring maybe intermingled with other effects causing it to be grainy or darker in tone.

Unnatural variation of color tones is often visible if you enlarge the photo, or the pattern will be out of place geometrically. Sometimes it is clear that the color gradient is not following the object or left over edited pixels are accidentally forgotten when erasing a deleted section.

Shadows and shading are one of the favorites for faked manipulation, but often the shadow will be going the wrong direction from the light source. Anything like this is usually a sure giveaway.

Just like shadows going the wrong way, reflective surface are often faked with the wrong directional light source. Occasionally you even catch a doctored photo with the wrong picture in the reflection area.

Also light sources not going the right direction in the photograph are usually visible. Look to see if there is more than one light source in a sunny photograph.

Pixilation that repeats itself in a certain area of photo can be evidence that something has been cloned or copied in a digital picture. This technique can be used to manipulate or cover an altered area in a photo.

Simple retouching techniques and airbrushing can easily conceal subtle details within a photo. You can use this technique to put the head of one person onto another person’s body.

Changing file types and resaving files onto of one another can cause a photo to have parts that are varied in pixel quality. This type of faking is very obvious when you see the difference in pixel qualities.

There are a number of ways to use software like Adobe Photoshop to examine a photo for editing and manipulation. Additional evidence can be found using decoding programs or programs specifically for detecting faked photographs. A little online searching will offer you downloadable software for these purposes. But the sad reality is, sometimes you cannot tell for sure. If something looks absolutely real, then there are two possibilities; it is real or it is an excellently made fake.

The faked photograph is an art form.

Della J. Staples writes for the Photoshopcourses.net blog and writes reviews of solar chargers for digital cameras. They are non profits blogs she uses to share her knowledge about Adobe Photoshop and help web designer to learn how it works.