# Deep Fakes and Implications for Photography



## JoeW (Jan 31, 2018)

I just read an article at Vox.com that I found deeply disturbing that dealt with "Deep Fakes" Why Reddit’s face-swapping celebrity porn craze is a harbinger of dystopia

It deals with the advances in software/post-production options that allow you to take anyone's face and create extremely realistic photos of that person that are fakes.  Okay, there have always been some of this going on (from the old Soviets eliminating out-of-favor leaders in the May Celebration stands, etc.) and we've all seen people use photoshop to manipulate photos.  And for those in to porn, you're probably seen "fakes" of a famous actress head over the body of someone engaging in sexual acts.

But the article got me thinking.  As one of the points mentioned in it....this can look so realistic, you can piss someone off and suddenly there are photos of pedofile acts being committed with what appears to be you in the photo.  Not some crude fake where a close look shows it to be a merge of some sort.  But a whole series....50-100 photos of what appears to be really you in sequence over an evening.  The kind of stuff that would get you terminated at work, fired from coaching a youth sports team, cost you a business account or client.

There were quasi-safeguards in the past.  Most efforts like this looked amateurish.  Or it took a real pro to do it.  Or at best it took so much effort it would generate 1 or 2, maybe 3 photos.  But now people can create a really good match, the software is available, the skills are widespread, and with facial recognition software improving, the dangers of this are far greater.

I don't know what the answer is.   

I know the article I read talked about how people who take a lot of pictures will be someone others become a lot more suspicious of.  I immediately thought of all those instances I took a picture on the street of someone in public in a public setting and they came up and insisted it was illegal to take their picture or demanding I delete it.  I think we're going to see a lot more of that in the future.  I think we're going to see situations where a photographer takes innocent photos (maybe a model's portfolio, a special event) and those photos are combined (without the photographer's permission) with porn or some other negative act.

I already know of two people who faced simplistic and crude attacks like this:  two former aides in the Republican party who spoke out against Donald Trump's nomination  and then got hit with a series of underhanded attacks by anonymous sources (included photoshopped pictures of spouses having multi-racial group sex).  It was bad enough that at least one other former aide I know censors his Facebook page (removing all anti-Trump references).  My point is not to make this partisan--b/c this isn't about political affiliation--those are just examples I've seen happen.  The article talks about we could see this when a HS girl turns down a prom invitation, or when a neighbor thinks your dog barks too much, or some other petty slight.

Thoughts?  Possible reactions or responses for trying to prevent this from becoming a bigger problem than it is?


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## zombiesniper (Jan 31, 2018)

This is where more evidence would be required for any legal action.

Even with really good fakes if you don't have an original file ie. RAW then it's really your word against theirs. So with appropriate digital evidence laws this could be taken care of.

Where this really becomes the issue is when you have a western society like Canada and the USA where social media condemns you without evidence. This is where people are currently being fired for no more evidence than an angry mob.
I have no solution for the media aspect but hope not too many people are burned before it's all figured out.


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## Nintendoeats (Jan 31, 2018)

I believe we will cease to see photographic evidence as being useful. In court this will happen quickly (create fake photos which replace the accused's face with the judges, done), social media it is harder to say. Most people don't need photographic evidence to believe things they've heard on Twitter anyway.

Essentially, I think that once everybody gets used to the idea that you can fake a picture of anybody doing anything, we willsimply cease to take photographs seriously as anything other than aesthetic exercises. I don't think that photographers will be burned at the stake though, it is too widespread an activity (find me somebody who DOESN'T take any photographs).


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## KmH (Jan 31, 2018)

Altered digital images often show evidence of the alteration in the histogram of the image and/or by examining the image at the pixel level.
Consequently, and as part of the discovery process, digital images get scrutinized pretty closely.

As it is, eyewitness testimony is known to be about the weakest, least reliable evidence based on visual perception that can be offered in court.


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## JoeW (Jan 31, 2018)

I don't disagree that a rigorous digital or forensic analysis can usually identify fakes.  And we've had photo fakes before.  But the difference here is social media combined with easy access to pretty powerful software and then facial recognition software--that's a unique combination that really multiples the potential impact.

It's pretty common these days for perspective employers to do a search on social media to see what shows up.  Imagine if someone who you pissed off creates a fake account on FB then posts a "deep fake" photo of you appearing to expose yourself to a child?  Or appearing to have sex with someone who is drunk and passed out?  Or in a line of white supremecists marching at Charlottesville with you wearing a nazi armband?  No trial involved, no jail time, but it would be pretty easy to be convicted in the court of public opinion as stuff would become viral.  There is already an instance were facial recognition software mis-identify a neo-nazi at Charlottesville with an engineering professor at University of Arkansas.  He was inundated with email and phone calls, had to shut down his phone and email.

Again, I'm not trying to be paranoid here.  Only that the potential for abuse by vindictive individuals who take advantage of social media is very high.


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## KmH (Jan 31, 2018)

Many minimize their use of social media, because they recognize there are so very many different ways it is _bad_ for both individuals and for society.



> Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. - Joshua the WOPR Computer.


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## petrochemist (Feb 1, 2018)

KmH said:


> Many minimize their use of social media, because they recognize there are so very many different ways it is _bad_ for both individuals and for society.
> 
> 
> 
> > Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. - Joshua the WOPR Computer.


I hought it was just because we're antisocial


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## smoke665 (Feb 1, 2018)

And yet the social media craze continues. I watched a young lady yesterday taking selfies of herself and posting one after the other. In many cases people don't have to worry about fake pictures because they put so much stupid stuff out there on their own.

But you bring up some scary points. I watched a crime show the other night where a husband had murdered his wife and framed another man. The forensic photographs of the scene supported the husbands version of the story. However it was discovered the next day that the first officer on the scene had snapped photos, before anyone else had arrived. Apparently the First Responders on the scene had moved the bodies to attempt resuscitation, which blew holes in the husbands story. An honest mistake that almost let a murderer go free. It made me think though that an unscrupulous official or a third party could just as easily add incriminating evidence to a crime scene photo. I've been on many scenes, there's a lot of people milling around, and depending on location there's no way you could remember every little detail days later.


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## BananaRepublic (Feb 1, 2018)

JoeW said:


> I just read an article at Vox.com that I found deeply disturbing that dealt with "Deep Fakes" Why Reddit’s face-swapping celebrity porn craze is a harbinger of dystopia
> 
> It deals with the advances in software/post-production options that allow you to take anyone's face and create extremely realistic photos of that person that are fakes.  Okay, there have always been some of this going on (from the old Soviets eliminating out-of-favor leaders in the May Celebration stands, etc.) and we've all seen people use photoshop to manipulate photos.  And for those in to porn, you're probably seen "fakes" of a famous actress head over the body of someone engaging in sexual acts.
> 
> ...



Petty slights are why American politics are where they are so I think there is probably no stopping this "Deep Fake" trend.


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## BananaRepublic (Feb 1, 2018)

KmH said:


> Altered digital images often show evidence of the alteration in the histogram of the image and/or by examining the image at the pixel level.
> Consequently, and as part of the discovery process, digital images get scrutinized pretty closely.
> 
> As it is, eyewitness testimony is known to be about the weakest, least reliable evidence based on visual perception that can be offered in court.


 
This level of investigation will make no difference to the twitterati


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## BananaRepublic (Feb 1, 2018)

smoke665 said:


> And yet the social media craze continues. I watched a young lady yesterday taking selfies of herself and posting one after the other. In many cases people don't have to worry about fake pictures because they put so much stupid stuff out there on their own.
> 
> But you bring up some scary points. I watched a crime show the other night where a husband had murdered his wife and framed another man. The forensic photographs of the scene supported the husbands version of the story. However it was discovered the next day that the first officer on the scene had snapped photos, before anyone else had arrived. Apparently the First Responders on the scene had moved the bodies to attempt resuscitation, which blew holes in the husbands story. An honest mistake that almost let a murderer go free. It made me think though that an unscrupulous official or a third party could just as easily add incriminating evidence to a crime scene photo. I've been on many scenes, there's a lot of people milling around, and depending on location there's no way you could remember every little detail days later.



Without getting stupid about society this is why the death penalty is at best flawed


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## AlanKlein (Feb 1, 2018)

smoke665 said:


> And yet the social media craze continues. I watched a young lady yesterday taking selfies of herself and posting one after the other. In many cases people don't have to worry about fake pictures because they put so much stupid stuff out there on their own.
> 
> But you bring up some scary points. I watched a crime show the other night where a husband had murdered his wife and framed another man. The forensic photographs of the scene supported the husbands version of the story. However it was discovered the next day that the first officer on the scene had snapped photos, before anyone else had arrived. Apparently the First Responders on the scene had moved the bodies to attempt resuscitation, which blew holes in the husbands story. An honest mistake that almost let a murderer go free. It made me think though that an unscrupulous official or a third party could just as easily add incriminating evidence to a crime scene photo. I've been on many scenes, there's a lot of people milling around, and depending on location there's no way you could remember every little detail days later.



We should use the bible standard that requires two eyewitnesses to find someone guilty of murder.


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## TheLibrarian (Feb 23, 2018)

True enough but the court of public opinion will convict you even without doctored photographs.


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## rexbobcat (Mar 5, 2018)

People ***** about social media but there are "millennials" that make money from it. Some of this stings of jealousy.


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## flyingPhoto (Jul 5, 2021)

when the government created a means to GROW DNA samples into larger sizes..... no one ever stopped to consider just how those samples were manipulated.. 

especially when the labs have admitted to only growing a very small section of that dna strand in the original sample....

Hve watches to many police shows, actual shows of actual cops and case work, NOT  stuff on ABC...

There have been far to many cases where a fridge for example was allowed to sit in an un heated un cooed store room in TEXAS for 30 years before they somehow "found the suspects DNA inside" just weeks after they managed to get their ideal suspects DNA through a family dna search online or that idealized suspect went to jail for a different crime and had samples taken from them


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## 407370 (Jul 6, 2021)

Any photo can be manipulated and any photo (manipulated or not) can be used to fit someones personal agenda.

I have a minimal social media footprint for the purpose of avoiding this kind of scrutiny or becoming a victim of my own posting.

The example that took my breath away was of a high school girl being accused of "casual racism" because she was wearing a Chinese silk dress without actually being Chinese!!

Haters gonna hate but there seems to be an increase in hate on the internet and every posting on social media is fuelling that hate with perceived evidence.

Deep fakes are getting easier to produce every day. Anyone used LUMINAR AI yet?? its awesome but scary to think what a motivated individual could do to a photo just to post "EVIDENCE" on social media which could ruin someone's life.


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## smoke665 (Jul 6, 2021)

407370 said:


> Haters gonna hate but there seems to be an increase in hate on the internet and every posting on social media is fuelling that hate with perceived evidence.



The anonymity of the internet has made it easy to speak without consequences. Obviously our forefathers didn't conceive a digital wasteland that would allow people to say things that would get them a poke in the nose in the real world.


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## mrca (Jul 6, 2021)

Easy, use the old middle ages test.  Have accused and accuser stick their hands in fire and the one that isn't burned is telling the truth.    I think there is less of this head swapping for these purposes than done by portrait photographers to swap heads for one without a blink.   This kind of stuff makes folks think photoshop is for head swapping and inevitably leads to a debate on how photoshop is "cheating."  So tedious since that discussion has been going on for 20 years.


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## smoke665 (Jul 6, 2021)

@mrca  I think most non photography people misunderstand that time is money and while doing a head swap  on one image may only take 5 mins, 5 mins on 100 images in a set is a hard days work. That's why most photographers shoot to get as much right in camera as possible.


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## Original katomi (Jul 6, 2021)

Re people stopping you and demanding you delete images 
Suggest you look up the relevant laws for your country 
Then you know where you stand re the law... yea ok it’s not worth getting a good kicking just because you are on the right side of the law
Here in uk I looked up the relevant laws for street photography 
And if someone asks politely I will delete or gives me a good reason why I should not take their photo
Eg undercover police


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## mrca (Jul 6, 2021)

Smoke, exactly.  They think an edit is like taking a photo, one click and done.  And yes, get it in camera if you can often results in too much time in post.  That's why with a group, taking several images is always wise.  When shooting alone, twice I have missed that  the women took the band off their hair and stored it on their wrist that was in the shot.  Total waste of time.  That doesn't happen any more,  cursing for an hour or two drives home the lesson.


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## flyingPhoto (Jul 6, 2021)

smoke665 said:


> @mrca  I think most non photography people misunderstand that time is money and while doing a head swap  on one image may only take 5 mins, 5 mins on 100 images in a set is a hard days work. That's why most photographers shoot to get as much right in camera as possible.


smoke,,,  THAT is the modern theology on photography... 

simply toss a batch of 100 digital images into photoshop, run the AI system on it, come back in an hour and see what was done. 

The concept of getting things right in camera, or in front of the camera, BEFORE taking a photograph is actually TAUGHT as WRONG these days.


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## smoke665 (Jul 7, 2021)

@flyingPhoto  "True editing" post has been around since the beginning in some form. Back in the 60's'/70's the darkroom was my Photoshop. The digital age and the ability to manipulate data just makes it easier and opens up new avenues. Like the comment I made earlier on head swapping, AI is another misconception promulgated by the cell phone manufactures.  It lets people with no knowledge of the basics take crappy photos and add cutesy stuff to diminish the fact that it's still a crappy image. AI is nothing more than an algorithm to adjust the image based on parameters. Lightroom's "auto" button supposed incorporates learning your preferences over time into the processing. By and large it can provide a quick starting point, but it still requires individualized adjustment, and will do nothing to fix composition errors. Frankly if you intend on relying on AI post to fix your images, you'd be better off setting your camera to ""Auto" and save as JPEG.


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## flyingPhoto (Jul 7, 2021)

even the PPA  believes all a photographer DOES or NEEDS to do is run a batch process through photoshop or lightroom


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## smoke665 (Jul 7, 2021)

flyingPhoto said:


> even the PPA  believes all a photographer DOES or NEEDS to do is run a batch process through photoshop or lightroom



I use batch processing all the time for basic or uniform adjustments, but there are limitations imposed by the individual image where batch processing doesn't work. Cropping & straightening for example, or blemish corrections, or exposure/shadow/highlights/white/black points and a ton of other image specific corrections. That's why those super presets for sale, don't look the same on your image.


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## mrca (Jul 7, 2021)

Smoke, a lady in her 60's  I know has been taking selfies on her cell phone and applying some app for skin softening.  All it seems to do is push blur to the max on skin and leave eyes sharp.   She is so proud of the images I don't have the heart to tell her it makes her skin look like plastic, although the wrinkles are gone and the eyes jump out like an alien.     The opposite was an older lady with wrinkles that not only ran horizontally, but also vertically.  I shot her with  a zeiss 100 makro planar and a 7' octa to fill in as much of the wrinkle shadows as possible, but they were still there.  I was teathered and she snuck a look at the monitor and said she liked her I phone photos better.   Sure a hardly sharp 2x3"  image vs one on a large monitor with a sharp lens.  Here's a revelation, people off these photo sites don't have a clue.  They don't care what camera/lens you use, what difficult situation you are dealing with, if you edited, only that they have a great expression and it is as flattering as possible.   As for folks who decry using LR/PS,  the slam on photography from 1840 was it was for people who couldn't or wouldn't master painting.  So is using a camera cheating?  Make a portrait in a fraction of a second, not days.  And along the painting example,  are we required to adhere to only one style of painting, realism?  Forget all that came before and the impressionists and surrealists who came after it?   If you are a realist, knock yourself out.  Photojournalists tend to be.  But I studied with perhaps the premier  photojournalistic wedding photographer and he still did work in post including toning and had a staff guy doing the heavy lifting after it was sent out for color correction etc.  But what did he know,  they only paid him 40-50  grand a wedding in 2011.


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## AlanKlein (Jul 7, 2021)

mrca said:


> Smoke, a lady in her 60's  I know has been taking selfies on her cell phone and applying some app for skin softening.  All it seems to do is push blur to the max on skin and leave eyes sharp.   She is so proud of the images I don't have the heart to tell her it makes her skin look like plastic, although the wrinkles are gone and the eyes jump out like an alien.     The opposite was an older lady with wrinkles that not only ran horizontally, but also vertically.  I shot her with  a zeiss 100 makro planar and a 7' octa to fill in as much of the wrinkle shadows as possible, but they were still there.  I was teathered and she snuck a look at the monitor and said she liked her I phone photos better.   Sure a hardly sharp 2x3"  image vs one on a large monitor with a sharp lens.  Here's a revelation, people off these photo sites don't have a clue.  They don't care what camera/lens you use, what difficult situation you are dealing with, if you edited, only that they have a great expression and it is as flattering as possible.   As for folks who decry using LR/PS,  the slam on photography from 1840 was it was for people who couldn't or wouldn't master painting.  So is using a camera cheating?  Make a portrait in a fraction of a second, not days.  And along the painting example,  are we required to adhere to only one style of painting, realism?  Forget all that came before and the impressionists and surrealists who came after it?   If you are a realist, knock yourself out.  Photojournalists tend to be.  But I studied with perhaps the premier  photojournalistic wedding photographer and he still did work in post including toning and had a staff guy doing the heavy lifting after it was sent out for color correction etc.  But what did he know,  they only paid him 40-50  grand a wedding in 2011.


Your conflating issues.  First the viewer understands a painter's work comes from his vision and imagination.  Looking at an oil, the viewer assumes it isn't an exact representation of the person or landscape or still life.  With photography, however, we assume, or most use to, that the result is what existed in nature at the time the camera snapped a picture at 1/125 of a second.  Sure, edits are done for cropping and exposure and contrast. But the essential elements were there at the time the photo was exposed.

Second, wedding photographers answer to their customers.  We're talking about photographic process in general and what the images represent at the time they are taken, not what a married couple wants to see in the photo frame in their home.

I'm not arguing against photoshopping and editing.  Everyone can do what they want. And will.  The question is if the result is a photographic image captured at the time of the exposure or some representation of the photographer's imagination as an oil painter would provide.


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## mrca (Jul 7, 2021)

Alan, have you ever seen a vermeer, they are realistic down to the individual knots in rug detail.  Yes, for some folks, a snap shot has nothing to do with the artistic process of deciding on a message or meaning, maximizing it using lenses, camera controls and post processing to achieve that vision.   For those that ASSUME a photo is merely aping what is in  front of the camera, they have been asleep for a century.   Even photojournalists are doing some editing these days.    Steiglitz and Steichen fought this battle over 120 years ago to get  photography the status of an art form.  One that can be used to express the vision and message of the artist.  It ticks me off to see people who see themselves as photographers, playing into the age old trope that photography isn't an art form.   Granted, for many it isn't.  But because someone uses a camera to create their art instead of a paint brush, doesn't make it any less an art form.   The problem we face is anyone can make a recognizable image with modern cameras so they think they are photographers and many call themselves artists.   They are, as much as a xerox machine.


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## JackMiller (Jul 7, 2021)

mrca said:


> Alan, have you ever seen a vermeer, they are realistic down to the individual knots in rug detail.  Yes, for some folks, a snap shot has nothing to do with the artistic process of deciding on a message or meaning, maximizing it using lenses, camera controls and post processing to achieve that vision.   For those that ASSUME a photo is merely aping what is in  front of the camera, they have been asleep for a century.   Even photojournalists are doing some editing these days.    Steiglitz and Steichen fought this battle over 120 years ago to get  photography the status of an art form.  One that can be used to express the vision and message of the artist.  It ticks me off to see people who see themselves as photographers, playing into the age old trope that photography isn't an art form.   Granted, for many it isn't.  But because someone uses a camera to create their art instead of a paint brush, doesn't make it any less an art form.   The problem we face is anyone can make a recognizable image with modern cameras so they think they are photographers and many call themselves artists.   They are, as much as a xerox machine.


Speaking as an artist, phone filters are just a novelty item.


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## smoke665 (Jul 7, 2021)

AlanKlein said:


> the result is what existed in nature at the time the camera snapped a picture at 1/125 of a second. Sure, edits are done for cropping and exposure and contrast. But the essential elements were there at the time the photo was exposed.



Not true Alan. Double exposure and other manipulations have been around since the late 1800's. Do a Google search on John Deakin from the the 30's. I frequently got creative in darkroom, adding and subtracting elements that weren't there at the time the photo was exposed.


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## mrca (Jul 7, 2021)

flying, please cite where PPA does that. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?    I haven't judged for them in over 10  years, but don't remember ever hearing that.  I was in charge of their mentor program before I relocated and I certainly didn't teach that.  What is wrong with batch processing?   I use a color checker passport and batch process each group of images under the same lighting condition.    It enables me to get a consistent starting point on white balance and get the colors dead on.   That kind of precision doesn't happen in camera.  Nor in camera do I have the precision to add a specific amount of warming to images from that baseline.   Someone who doesn't have a clue would never appreciate the consistent color across a range of images.    I wish all the novices who either don't know photoshop or don't use it, would take a class before condemning it.  They call it cheating because edited images will almost always look better than straight out of camera and they hate it that they cant produce such quality.  And if they shoot jpeg, they have already let the camera computer EDIT the image.    If the shoot raw and don't edit, their images are flat, have poor contrast, color and sharpness.   Usually these people are collectors not photographers  so would never call someone using a 12 grand 400 mm 2.8 to photo pro football cheating when they can't match it with their kit lens.  Remember the  quote, you don't know what you don't know.   Why do these people think they are qualified to preach about what is acceptable and not.   Reminds me of the Inherit the Wind movie quote,  God speaks to Brady and brady tells  the world.   I wish the photo gods would speak to me too.  Why don't the anti PS folks, show us  your IMAGES that document   how unedited images can consistently be high quality.  And no jpeg camera edited captures, only raw captures.


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## limr (Jul 7, 2021)

Oh, y'all.

This was a 3-year-old thread about legal ramifications of new photo editing abilities for creating fake images, and it was revived to be YET ANOTHER discussion on the relative merits of editing and the evils of social media.

Could we at least stay on subject for this particular thread, or if you feel like beating dead horses, find a newer thread on topic or start a new one? K thx!


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## mrca (Jul 8, 2021)

Limr, I agree.  We seem to have some newer members who reopen dozens of  years old posts by just tossing in an outlandish grenade often off topic that would surely provoke a response.  I noticed it daily with 3 or 4 such posts a day on ancient threads when it first started happening.


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## Space Face (Jul 8, 2021)

mrca said:


> Limr, I agree.  We seem to have some newer members who reopen dozens of  years old posts by just tossing in an outlandish grenade often off topic that would surely provoke a response.  I noticed it daily with 3 or 4 such posts a day on ancient threads when it first started happening.


Seems to be the same culprit/s time after time with very few if any actual photographs being posted.  All the knowledge (allegedly) but no examples of that knowledge being evidenced.  All mouth and no trousers as we'd say here in the UK.🤣


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## mrca (Jul 8, 2021)

Space here,   a cowboy would say all hat and no cattle.


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## smoke665 (Jul 8, 2021)

mrca said:


> by just tossing in an outlandish grenade often off topic that would surely provoke a response



And like a moth drawn to the flame, here we are.....


Back on topic. I know this is an old thread but the technology has gained momentum. Where I see the issue is that those familiar with PS or other similar software have been able to do sophisticated editing for some time, but the more recent advances and introduction of AI in the mix has opened the ability up to the masses. Many of whom likely have no interest other than the novelty. Yes those experienced can still catch the tells on an edited image, but in the click through world of social media, most wouldn't.

For those that haven't had the opportunity to use the latest release of the Neural Filters in PS, I'd highly recommend you try them. They still have a ways to go but it's scary how good they already are. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/neural-filters.html Here's an example, Mona Happy.....Mona not. LOL


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## Space Face (Jul 8, 2021)

mrca said:


> Space here,   a cowboy would say all hat and no cattle.


🤣🤣Same thing I suppose.  Nice one.


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## mrca (Jul 8, 2021)

Space, yes, meaning is the guy has the hat like he's a cowboy or rancher, but has no cattle, ie, a poser.


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## Space Face (Jul 8, 2021)

mrca said:


> Space, yes, meaning is the guy has the hat like he's a cowboy or rancher, but has no cattle, ie, a poser.


Yeah, speaks a good game without the balls to back it up.


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## limr (Jul 8, 2021)

And this is supposed to be staying on topic? Let's give it a rest.


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## vintagesnaps (Jul 8, 2021)

If nothing else I picked up a couple of new sayings...


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