Can software identify the edits used to turn one photo into another?
Asked 7/7/2016
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2 answers
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If I have both the original image and an edited version, is there any software that can analyze them and estimate what global adjustments were applied (for example contrast, tone, color shifts, etc.)? I’m not looking for a perfect result or local masking edits—just a way to roughly infer the settings used so I can learn how the look was created.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
3
Reverse engineering contains word engineer for a reason.
Those tools are non-existent for a number of reasons:
- even small number of modifications may be applied in an astonishing amount of orders -
N!.6!=120orders of applying only 6 adjustments even if the modification software is known. Even Paint.NET has a magnitude more adjustments than that - there is no standard for image modifications. Even more than that: most of popular software is propriatrary (the specifics of algorythms corresponding to adjustments are unknown) and EXIF containing the name of program is oftenly stripped
- you said that the initial image is available but it is available in vanishingly small number of cases and in these cases you may ask the author about processing technique as well
- modifications may be local
- the colour space in which modifications were done is unknown
In rare cases the information about applied adjustments is stored in EXIF data either by camera or by manipulation software.
There are miriads of processing tehniques created and vast amount of them were created by hobbyists. All you need to create one yourself is reading the manuals for the software which you use and experiment - it is that easy.
Originally by user49477. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user49477
10y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Not really. There isn’t a general tool that can reliably “reverse engineer” an edited photo into the exact list of edits used.
Why not:
- Many different combinations of adjustments can produce a very similar result.
- The order of edits matters, so even a small set of tools creates many possible edit paths.
- Editing programs use different, often proprietary, algorithms, so there’s no universal way to map one result back to settings.
- Presets/styles are often just arbitrary bundles of adjustments with non-descriptive names.
- If local edits were used, the problem becomes even harder.
For learning, the better approach is manual analysis: compare the original and edited image and study likely changes such as contrast, black/white point, overall brightness, color balance, saturation, and tone. That teaches more than trying to identify a preset name, since presets themselves don’t explain the creative decisions behind the look.
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