Detecting Photoshopped Faces by Scripting Photoshop

TL;DR

This paper introduces a machine learning method trained on Photoshop-generated fake images to detect and localize face manipulations, outperforming humans and capable of reversing edits in some cases.

Contribution

The novel approach uses Photoshop scripting to generate training data, enabling effective detection and localization of face manipulations, including undoing edits in real images.

Findings

Model outperforms humans in detecting manipulated images

Can predict specific locations of edits

Successfully applied to real artist-created manipulations

Abstract

Most malicious photo manipulations are created using standard image editing tools, such as Adobe Photoshop. We present a method for detecting one very popular Photoshop manipulation -- image warping applied to human faces -- using a model trained entirely using fake images that were automatically generated by scripting Photoshop itself. We show that our model outperforms humans at the task of recognizing manipulated images, can predict the specific location of edits, and in some cases can be used to "undo" a manipulation to reconstruct the original, unedited image. We demonstrate that the system can be successfully applied to real, artist-created image manipulations.