Digital Image Forgery and Its Detection

Digital image manipulations are performed to enhance the image quality for print or visual display or to convey some useful or meaningful information from it. With an abundance of freely available, powerful, or low-cost digital image editing tools, a digital image can be easily altered with little to no skills. In a digital image forgery, the digital images are altered or modified deliberately to conceal facts from the image with a criminal, malicious, or mischievous intent. The digitally forged images are often indistinguishable from the original image. Thus, the perception of these images to the observer can be detrimental resulting in a fatal consequence in court, law enforcement, crime and accident scene investigations, scientific publishing, media, advertisement, news, social media, etc. Image forgery detection methods are used to confirm its legitimacy, and authenticity to discern whether an image is manipulated or not. There are many methods to verify the authenticity of the digital images, and the legitimate techniques, and guidelines to modify the digital images before they are published or shared in the public media such as social media, news media, scholarly articles, etc. This presentation will discuss inappropriate digital image manipulations, digital image forgery, image forgery detection methods, and its consequences.