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EXIF/Metadata/IPTC Information Editors

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SandShark

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Suppose I have an image that shows the following information in the metadata:

File: IMG_5987.CR2
File size: 7,628KB
Camera Model: Canon EOS 30D
Camera serial number: 03* 60
Firmware: Firmware 1.0.4
Owner: unknown
Date/Time: 2007:04:21 13:40:37
Shutter speed: 1/400 sec
Aperture: 7.1
Exposure mode: Av
Exposure compensation: +1/3
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Spot
Drive mode: Continuous
ISO: 1000
Lens: 300mm
Focal length: 420mm
AF mode: One-shot AF
Image size: 1728 x 1152
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto

Is there software that would allow someone to change information such as the camera model and camera serial number? Thanks.

Steve

--
http://www.threepalmsphoto.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/threepalmsphoto/
 
gaussian blur said:
SandShark said:
Is there software that would allow someone to change information such
as the camera model and camera serial number?
Click to expand...
ExifTool can change just about any tag:
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/
Click to expand...
If I can take this a step further, what proof could someone provide, other than a registered copyright, to show that they are the owner of a specific image. In other words, say one of my images was taken without my permission and used commercially. If I can't use the metadata, what could I use to prove the image was mine?

Steve
--
http://www.threepalmsphoto.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/threepalmsphoto/
 
Hi Steve,
SandShark said:
If I can take this a step further, what proof could someone provide,
other than a registered copyright, to show that they are the owner of
a specific image. In other words, say one of my images was taken
without my permission and used commercially. If I can't use the
metadata, what could I use to prove the image was mine?
Click to expand...
As far I know, the only way you can proove you're the image owner is, you shoot in raw mode -and never gives that (is original) file to someone. For now, raw image can be "created" only inside camera.

So, showing some image with modified metadata, anybody can claim (s)he is the owner -but only you have raw "negative".

Bogdan
--
My pictures are my memories
http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/
 
Comments as follows:
hbx2004 said:
SandShark said:
If I can take this a step further, what proof could someone provide,
other than a registered copyright, to show that they are the owner of
a specific image. In other words, say one of my images was taken
without my permission and used commercially. If I can't use the
metadata, what could I use to prove the image was mine?
Click to expand...
As far I know, the only way you can proove you're the image owner is,
you shoot in raw mode -and never gives that (is original) file to
someone. For now, raw image can be "created" only inside camera.
So, showing some image with modified metadata, anybody can claim
(s)he is the owner -but only you have raw "negative".

Bogdan
Click to expand...
I don't think that even a raw file is an exact proof that you are the original owner, as given a JPEG with complete metadata, I could generate a raw file that would be very close to an original raw file from which the JPEG was taken.

There are some cameras that digitally sign their images so if the digital signature tag is intact , it proves that the image was untouched after it left a particular camera, but the inverse is not true as one could remove the digital signature information and then there would be no tracing where the image came from.

You are basically facing the same problem that software developers have in that it is impossible to prevent a hacker from patching the code to bypass any copyright protection scheme.

Regards, GordonBGood
 
GordonBGood said:
I don't think that even a raw file is an exact proof that you are the
original owner, as given a JPEG with complete metadata, I could
generate a raw file that would be very close to an original raw file
from which the JPEG was taken.
Click to expand...
Never seen a tool able to create raw from jpeg -can you give some link?

Technically, I am quite sure it is possible to create raw file. But IMO, impossible such "duplicate" would equal to original per pixel level. Analyzing raw data, some expert could tell, data isn't coming from sensor (no matter what metadata contains). As you say: "very close to original"...

Of course, I'm not arguing on that -just thinking loud :-)

Greetings,
Bogdan
--
My pictures are my memories
http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/
 
hbx2004 said:
SandShark said:
If I can take this a step further, what proof could someone provide,
other than a registered copyright, to show that they are the owner of
a specific image. In other words, say one of my images was taken
without my permission and used commercially. If I can't use the
metadata, what could I use to prove the image was mine?
Click to expand...
As far I know, the only way you can proove you're the image owner is,
you shoot in raw mode -and never gives that (is original) file to
someone. For now, raw image can be "created" only inside camera.
So, showing some image with modified metadata, anybody can claim
(s)he is the owner -but only you have raw "negative".

Bogdan
--
My pictures are my memories
http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/
Click to expand...
Well, that's unfortunate. There is no RAW file. Thanks for the response.

Steve

--
http://www.threepalmsphoto.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/threepalmsphoto/
 
Hello Bogdan,
hbx2004 said:
Never seen a tool able to create raw from jpeg -can you give some link?
Click to expand...
Now there is one. ;-)

I've created a small program which generate Panasonic FZ-30 RAW files from JPEG images:

http://www.photome.de/files/rawwriter.zip

(Requires the Visual Basic 6 runtime, which is included in Windows 2000 and above)

Simply extract both files into the same directory, start the rawwriter.exe, select a JPEG image and click on "Process" to generate a FZ-30 RAW file.

That's just a simple example program - that means it does not add hot pixels, CAs, sensor noise and there are no additional options - so an expert could still see, that these RAW images are not created by a real FZ-30.

But if I would investigate some more hours, it would be no problem to impliment stuff like that too.

Cu, Jens
--
http://www.photome.de
 
GordonBGood said:
hbx2004 said:
SandShark said:
If I can take this a step further, what proof could someone provide,
other than a registered copyright, to show that they are the owner of
a specific image. In other words, say one of my images was taken
without my permission and used commercially. If I can't use the
metadata, what could I use to prove the image was mine?
Click to expand...
As far I know, the only way you can proove you're the image owner is,
you shoot in raw mode -and never gives that (is original) file to
someone. For now, raw image can be "created" only inside camera.
So, showing some image with modified metadata, anybody can claim
(s)he is the owner -but only you have raw "negative".

Bogdan
Click to expand...
I don't think that even a raw file is an exact proof that you are the
original owner, as given a JPEG with complete metadata, I could
generate a raw file that would be very close to an original raw file
from which the JPEG was taken.
Click to expand...
That's what I'm afraid could be argued if the evidence were presented in a court of law.
GordonBGood said:
There are some cameras that digitally sign their images so if the
digital signature tag is intact , it proves that the image was
untouched after it left a particular camera, but the inverse is not
true as one could remove the digital signature information and then
there would be no tracing where the image came from.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, I didn't take the shot with one of those cameras. I wish I had. :(
GordonBGood said:
You are basically facing the same problem that software developers
have in that it is impossible to prevent a hacker from patching the
code to bypass any copyright protection scheme.
Click to expand...
That's what I didn't want to hear. Thanks for the information.

Steve
GordonBGood said:
Regards, GordonBGood
Click to expand...
--
http://www.threepalmsphoto.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/threepalmsphoto/
 
Hi Jens,
Jens D said:
Jens D said:
Never seen a tool able to create raw from jpeg -can you give some link?
Click to expand...
Now there is one. ;-)
I've created a small program which generate Panasonic FZ-30 RAW files
from JPEG images...
Click to expand...
Well, well... actually I suspected, there is something somewhere :-)
Too bad, it isn't for Canon cameras, so I could "play" with it a bit...

But seriously, I don't see any practical use of jpg2raw converter, except for learning about raw -and "cheating", of course :-)

Greetings,
Bogdan
--
My pictures are my memories
http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/
 
hbx2004 said:
Jens D said:
hbx2004 said:
Never seen a tool able to create raw from jpeg -can you give some link?
Click to expand...
Now there is one. ;-)
I've created a small program which generate Panasonic FZ-30 RAW files
from JPEG images...
Click to expand...
Well, well... actually I suspected, there is something somewhere :-)
Too bad, it isn't for Canon cameras, so I could "play" with it a bit...
Click to expand...
Any programmer that works with raw image convertors such as Jens D, the author of the PhotoMe metadata viewer and editor, or myself, could write 2 raw convertors for any of the raw formats we support, as it is just a matter of reversing the process. In fact, when one writes raw codecs for the Vista Windows Imaging Component (WIC), one has to write a raw encoder if one wants to be able to edit metadata and embed it into the new raw image file, so this is going to become more common.
hbx2004 said:
But seriously, I don't see any practical use of jpg2raw converter,
except for learning about raw -and "cheating", of course :-)
Click to expand...
You're right that the practical use of converting a lossy format such a JPEG back to raw is very limited, as one can't really recover tonality graduations that have already been lost and can only filter JPEG compression artifacts to try to smooth them out; however a raw format is a raw format and most people would assume that it came directly from a camera.

Regards, GordonBGood
 
SandShark said:
GordonBGood said:
You are basically facing the same problem that software developers
have in that it is impossible to prevent a hacker from patching the
code to bypass any copyright protection scheme.
Click to expand...
That's what I didn't want to hear. Thanks for the information.
Click to expand...
Steve, it sounds like you have had the bitter experience of having had a photograph ripped off without credit. The only thing you could do for this case would be try to embed secret data into the image so that it wouldn't be detected, and hopefully wouldn't be stripped out even if the image were edited, but with which you could reconstruct something like a copyright notice using special software in a court of law. This technique is sometimes used for computer software so that the source of the piracy can be traced and the theft proved, but it is a little easier for software in that there is a lot of code for the thieves to go through to try to find the marker bit, and it won't be obvious even if they are looking right at it.

The problem with digital format images is that metadata can be stripped, formats can be converted, or the image can be edited or recompressed, which will generally destroy the marker. For instance, say one had a digital signature embedded along the bottom row of pixels in every image; all it would take would be a crop to remove that. I can think of a few techniques of using special software to embed some information in the body of JPEG images without making it too obvious which might survive editing, but only if the thieves didn't know to look for it and reverse the modifications.

Other than the above techniques, if one is concerned about copyright theft I guess the general rule would be "Don't publish full size originals without embedded watermarks.", as surely the effects of removing such watermarks would be visible. Publishing smaller size JPEG's shouldn't be so much of a problem if one retains the originals in that experts should be able to confirm that resizing has taken place on the resized images.

Regards, GordonBGood
 
Thanks for taking the time and effort to respond with such informative and interesting posts. In hindsight, I now realize I could have done some things differently. You are right about one of my images being ripped off. I can't go into specific details, but I haven't thrown in the towel just yet. We still have other options to consider. Again, thanks for all the great information.

Steve
--
http://www.threepalmsphoto.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/threepalmsphoto/
 
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