The Camera Never Lies but the Software Can Page 1 of 5 NYTimes Home Site Index Archive Help Welcome furdx Member Center Log Out Go to a Section Site Search Action canceled Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested The page might be temporarily unavailable NYTimes com Technology Circuits Advertisement The Camera Never Lies but the Software Can Action cance Internet Explorer was una The page might be tempo Please try the following Click the If you have visited what has been sto click Work Offline For information ab click the Help men Refres Internet Explorer Illustration by Andy Chen By KATIE HAFNER Published March 11 2004 HEN John Knoll created Photoshop in 1989 he knew he was designing an image editing program that could be used in good ways and bad But even Mr Knoll who wrote the software with his brother Tom was unprepared for how outlandish photo manipulation would become When we worked on it mostly we saw the possibilities the cool things said Mr Knoll 41 Not how it would be abused The same tools that can be used to crop retouch and otherwise edit digital images can be used just as easily to distort alter and fabricate them With Photoshop and similar programs now widely available in inexpensive easy to use consumer versions just about anyone with rudimentary computer skills can cut paste erase combine and retouch photographs It doesn t take much skill to make the unreal seem real ARTICLE TOOLS E Mail This Article Printer Friendly Format Most E Mailed Articles Reprints Permissions TIMES NEWS TRACKER Topics Alerts Computers and the Internet http www nytimes com 2004 03 11 technology circuits 11imag html pagewanted all position 3 11 04 The Camera Never Lies but the Software Can Once this kind of technology was only available to people who could spend 1 000 on software said Mr Knoll who now works for Industrial Light and Magic the special effects company Now it s available to everyone even those who want to use it for slander Page 2 of 5 Photography Find out more about photography Adobe Systems Incorporated Copyrights Related Research copyrights Playing with and circulating digital images has become something of a national pastime the visual equivalent of e mailed jokes Family photos are frequent fodder and the Web teems with sight gags and fakes a shark attacking a British Navy diver as he escapes up a ladder to a helicopter northeastern North America in complete darkness after the August blackout a triple tornado accompanying Hurricane Lili which hit Louisiana in October 2002 adobe systems incorporated HighBeam Research has an extensive archive of more tha 28 million documents from 2 600 sources But not all digitally altered images are innocuous A malicious one surfaced last month when two photographs taken a year apart began circulating on the Web as one The composite which carried a false Associated Press credit purported to show John Kerry and Jane Fonda known for her stance against the Vietnam War sharing a speaker s platform at a 1971 antiwar rally Conservative groups circulated the manipulated photo for several days and it appeared in several publications before it was revealed to be a fake apparently stitched together by someone opposed to Mr Kerry s presidential run Faked photos are nothing new Even with film and negatives it was possible with the right darkroom equipment and some skill and creativity to remove people from images for example or to combine a jackrabbit and an antelope to create a gag jackalope postcard Nor is photography for political purposes new In 1840 Hippolyte Bayard one of the earliest photographers staged a picture of himself as a drowned man because he thought his work was not given proper recognition by the French government Pound Ridge NY Including a deck and garden this tripl in a mid 1800s oversized townhouse i available as a short term furnished ren View more apartments for rent in Manhattan on realestate nytimes co But the scale of faking and manipulating is so much greater now in the environment of the pixel which invites alteration said Fred Ritchin the author of In Our Own Image The Coming Revolution in Photography Aperture 1999 Adobe Systems which makes Photoshop says there are about 5 million registered users of the various professional and consumer versions of its software including Photoshop Elements 2 0 which costs 99 Similar programs like Paint Shop Pro and Microsoft Digital Image Suite are widely available And many computers digital cameras scanners and printers now include free image editing software Many doctored photos are just funny like the one of a man hoisting what appears to be a 90 pound cat But David Mikkelson who with his wife Barbara runs Snopes com an online repository and debunker of urban legends and hoaxes including some composite photos said that sometimes fake images strike a chord because they reflect a certain reality People are making caricatures based on existing conceptions he said This helps them spread far and wide 1 1971 John Kerry preparing to speak at an antiwar rally in Mineola N Y Photographer Ken Light Corbis 2 1972 Jane Fonda at a Vietnam War protest in Miami Beach Photographer Owen Franken Corbis 3 2004 A composite Kerry Fonda photograph in a fake newspaper clipping circulated widely on the Internet Such was the case with a manipulated photo that appeared on the Web in 2002 that showed President Bush holding a book upside down during http www nytimes com 2004 03 11 technology circuits 11imag html pagewanted all position 3 11 04 The Camera Never Lies but the Software Can Page 3 of 5 a visit with children in Houston The image was clearly meant to be funny Even if it were real it would still be just a funny picture the Mikkelsons wrote on their site Although it was quickly revealed to be a fake the photo served to reinforce an existing viewpoint as did an altered photo of Senator Tom Daschle in which he salutes the flag with his left hand This point was apparently not lost on the creator of the Kerry Fonda composite Especially during the presidential primaries with scrutiny being given to Mr Kerry s antiwar activities in the early 1970 s images like the one showing him with Ms Fonda can have a strong influence on the people who see them DARKNESS FALLS A doctored satellite photo of the blackout in the Northeast last August exaggerated its effect What if that photo had floated around two days before the general election and there wasn t time to say it s not true said Ken Light