Anicet Mbida 06:52, September 29, 2022

Anicet Mbida delivers to us every morning what is best in terms of innovation.

This Thursday, he is interested in an application capable of unmasking filters and other editing tools on a photo.

The innovation of the day will not please those who use filters and other tools to retouch their photos on social networks.

You have found an app that can tell if a face has been retouched.

And even… to delete the modifications to find the original photo!

The application is called "VU: photo editing detector".

She is formidable: we start by sending her a photo of a face.

And after analysis, she will color all the areas that she considers to have been manipulated (in red, those that have been strongly; in green, those where it was lighter).

Then, you can ask to cancel the changes to get an idea of ​​what the photo would look like without any editing.

The result is not always perfect.

But most of the time, it's stunning! 

How can the program know that a photo has been retouched?

And most importantly, how does it reverse the changes?

In fact, it analyzed thousands of photos modified by the most common editing applications (like FaceTune or FaceApp), or by the most popular filters (on Instagram or Snap).

They then passed them through the grinder of an artificial intelligence.

This made it possible to list all the invisible traces left when a face is slimmed, when a wrinkle is removed or the cheekbones are enhanced… This allows you to know when a photo has been retouched.

The same principle is also applied to reverse the process, since we know what the modifications are and how they were made.

Note that the program only works on faces.

That's probably why it's so effective.

It does not detect retouching on the body.

Is the app available, and can anyone use it?

Yes.

It is even free, both on Android mobiles and on iPhones.

Obviously, many rushed to check the celebrities' social media posts.

Problem: today, image editing is almost outdated.

From now on, it is the videos that we manipulate.

And there, we will need a whole new generation of tools to detect them.