Exposing Digital Forgeries Through Specular Highlights on the Eye

M.K. Johnson and H. Farid

9th International Workshop on Information Hiding, Saint Malo, France, 2007

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When creating a digital composite of two people, it is difficult to exactly match the lighting conditions under which each individual was originally photographed. In many situations, the light source in a scene gives rise to a specular highlight on the eyes. We show how the direction to a light source can be estimated from this highlight. Inconsistencies in lighting across an image are then used to reveal traces of digital tampering.