Fundementals of digital imaging

This thesis project shows that conventional photography and digital imaging are two visual media with very distinct differences: A conventional photograph is a human-readable information entity with an actual physical body in the form of silver clusters or color molecules embedded in gelatin. Silver halide materials have a chemical attribute and are organic, almost living organisms affected by heat, moisture, light and pollution, similar as we are. The actual information contained in a photographic image is always overlaid by an unwanted signal called noise. In conventional photography noise becomes visual as graininess. The amount of information in a photographic image cannot be determined exactly and there is always a significant loss of information from image generation to image generation (multiple generation loss). Because objects record themselves on light sensitive silver halide materials using light as a messenger, a photographic image is directly connected to reality, stenciled from the real. This fact is one of the reasons why photography as a medium has a high level of credibility. Despite all the medium inherent subjective, selective and abstractive factors, photography still has the stamp of an objective and reliable source of information, a stamp of authenticity. A digital image is an immaterial, machine-readable stream of bits in the form of a matrix. This numeric structure can be easily altered and manipulated, not only in the space but also in the frequency domain. The solid bond which connects the conventional photographic image to reality disappears with digital imagery. The image is simply itself, has no chemical attribute, and contains no evidence that something existed in reality. The amount of information in a digital image can be exactly determined. However, there is also a certain amount of noise present which, however, cannot be compared with the graininess of photographic materials. Digital information can be compressed with or without a visual loss. Transmission of digital information is easier and more reliable because the information can be error corrected. More than 150 years after the discovery of the photographic process, the wide availability of the tools of digital imaging make it clear to the public that mechanical images are not, and never have been, a reliable source of information. This thesis project points out that the belief in the objectivity of photographic information was, and is, an illusion. The thesis project Fundamentals of Digital Imaging analyzes the basic concepts of digital imaging not only theoretically but also visually by including six plates of digital artwork

Image Automation: Post-Conceptual Post-Photography and the Deconstruction of the Photographic Image

This PhD thesis delivers an artistic research practice based on a deconstruction of the photographic image. Photography in post-photographic, digital culture has, due to changes in technology, become a matter of style while neglecting its own traditional process base. This thesis claims that similar automated processes can be found within information technology, which in the artistic realm has a strong relation to Conceptual art. A post-conceptual critique of the notion of ‘information’ in Conceptual practice allows for a repositioning of the image. Focusing on visual, transformative reflection, the thesis resists the temptation to present generalising philosophical speculation in favour of an artistic research practice that focuses on the inner, transformative workings of artworks, or the work’s ‘figuration’ as I call it, following Jean-François Lyotard and Georges Didi-Huberman. This research project offers an artistic interrogation into the potential of post-photographic practices under post-conceptual conditions. Apart from photography, the practice employs drawing, installation art, painting and printmaking to produce work that is often conceptually developed on the computer. Much of the work consists of abstract, blob- like ‘figures’ appropriated from digital-image material, while other work is measurement- based. Figuration is advanced in each of these through constructive processes that remain visible. A developed understanding of process-oriented practices within the digital realm, which this PhD offers, allows present-day photography to connect to its traditional diversity. The necessary re-thinking of the image, which is a key result of the research, may affect artistic practices beyond photography, giving an extended contemporary photographic practice increased artistic relevance. The research is supported by art-historical discussions concerning the history of photography, the history of Conceptual art, and what Svetlana Alpers calls ‘the northern mode’ of painting. Technical discussions of post-photography and the notion of ‘information’ help clarify underlying processes, while philosophical considerations are used to give meaning to a changed concept of the image. Finally, a methodological discussion contextualises the research within current notions of practice-led research

Recognition Model of Counterfeiting Digital Records of Biometric Photographic Image

Biometric portrait as one of the most important means of identifying requirements through strict definition of dimensional relationships, preservation of realistic information about all technical characteristics of the photographic image, so that all biometric values can be digitized and used in recognition. The great variety and accessibility of applications for digital processing of digital record of a photographic image has enabled a visually convincing display of a forged photograph that leaves a different impression on the viewer and transmits a different, that is, a forged message. Due to the need to prove the authenticity of the digital record of the photographic image, methods have been developed for the analysis of the record that can detect deviations from the real record even when there are no visual signs of processing the photographic image. Not all analysis techniques can detect certain methods of photo manipulation, so multiple digital photography detection and analysis techniques need to be applied. In order to prove its authenticity, the scientific paper deals with methods for analysis and detection of forgery of digital photography with respect to the digital record and the structure of JPEG format

Lecture notes for NSCP-funded short course - Remote sensing training for resource officers and farmers

The aim of this course is to provide an introduction to remote sensing, and knowledge and practice in image processing techniques for the extraction of information from remotely sensed data. Aerial photography is the original form of earth remote sensing, and is still a widely used and important data source for many purposes. This course is directed principally at the analysis of digital image data recorded by satellite or airborne platforms. Remote sensing is considered to be the methodology of collecting and interpreting target information over a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum

Review of Digital Image Forgery Detection

Forgery in digital images can be done by manipulating the digital image to conceal some meaningful or useful information of the image. It can be much difficult to identify the edited region from the original image in various cases. In order to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the image, the detection of forgery in the image is necessary. Adaption of modern lifestyle and advanced photography equipment has made tempering of digital image easy with the help of image editing soft wares. It is thus important to detect such image tempering operations. Different methods exist in literature that divide the suspicious image into overlapped blocks and extract some features from the images to detect the type of forgery that exist in the image. The image forgery detection can be done based on object removal, object addition, unusual color modifications in the image. Many existing techniques are available to overcome this problem but most of these techniques have many limitations. Images are one of the powerful media for communication. In this paper a survey of different types of forgery and digital image forgery detection has been focused

Design of An Efficient Image Enhancement Algorithms Using Hybrid Technique

Fundamental purposeof the image enhancement is to process the image in such a way so as to produce an image that is better in some or the other aspect than the original one for a specific purpose. It makes it easier for human viewers and machines to extract, interpret, and wherever necessary perform further processing on the information contained of the images. Image Enhancement is one of the important requirements in Digital Image Processing which is essential in making an image useful for various applications which can be seen in the various areas of Digital photography, Medicine, Geographic Information System, Industrial Inspection, Law Enforcement etc. Image Enhancement is used to improve the poor visual quality of the images. The proposed method is a hybrid method which is very effective in enhancing the images. Initially, frequency domain analysis is done followed by spatial domain procedures. The performance of the proposed method is assessed on the basis of two parameters i.e. Mean Square Error (MSE) and Peak Signal to noise ratio (PSNR)

Multimodalities in Metadata: Gaia Gate

Metadata is information about objects. Existing metadata standards seldom describe details concerning an object’s context within an environment; this thesis proposes a new concept, external contextual metadata (ECM), examining metadata, digital photography, and mobile interface theory as context for a proposed multimodal framework of media that expresses the internal and external qualities of the digital object and how they might be employed in various use cases. The framework is binded to a digital image as a singular object. Information contained in these ‘images’ can then be processed by a renderer application to reinterpret the context that the image was captured, including non-visually. Two prototypes are developed through the process of designing a renderer for the new multimodal data framework: a proof-of-concept application and a demonstration of ‘figurative’ execution (titled ‘Gaia Gate’), followed by a critical design analysis of the resulting products