[Richard Kimball]

I found this posted on the Adobe user forums. Other users confirmed that Photoshop 8 analyzes photos and will not open photos of money. Since it's not an announced feature, I have no idea what else Adobe considers illegal content.

The rest of the thread is here. If you're not an Adobe user, it asks you to create an account, but you can view the thread as a guest by clicking the link above the registration box with the thread title on it.

I use PS 7, and am not considering upgrading. PS 7 doesn't have this wonderful feature.

Also, though, I find it difficult to imagine Adobe just coming up with this nanny-feature on their own. Many users of the new PS have complained about how slow it is, and this image analysis has to be one of the reasons. That makes me wonder, who is telling them to do it?

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[lowbridge]

bump

[Khurkris]

...my toes were cold this morning...but they warmed up.

[Wumpus Hunter]

I wonder what that information" button sends back home to them?

[smith288]

Be like me and use Paint Shop Pro 8.

[AAABEST]

Anyone out there want to become a mulit-millioinaire?

Create software products that keep all prying eyes out of the users machine. Also there will be big demand for software that isn't part of the "clampdown".

I want a cut of your first million.

This country is become a friggin' surveillance industrial complex, this stuff will be in demand. It's starting to piss me off.

[MediaMole]

This was featured on TechTV last night. It appears that any image with currency as an element will not open. Imagine if the picture of a kid with his first earnings cannot be opened.

I'm all for stopping counterfeiting, but there have to be limits.

[Theo]

I use Photoshop **all** the time, and find this fascinating! It is pretty nasty of Adobe to do that, to "critique" what we're doing with the software we've purchased. Perhaps it's tied to the secret messages demonized Muslims are "hiding" in photos they send back and forth? Weird....

Previous versions did have hidden stuff in the images that "copyrighted" an image, no? Digimarc "watermark," it's called. Even if you did a screenshot of such a "copyrighted" image, Photoshop would *know* that it was copyrighted by a particular person/company because of the invisible watermark embedded in the image. Wonder if the technology is related?

Ted.

[Grig]

Somne digital photocopiers do the same thing, they won't copy the page, or even shutdown if you try to copy a bill.

There will be a hack out to disable this before long I bet.

I also bet it doens't check if the image is of Canadian or any other foreign money. I wonder if it covers past versions of US bills.

Doesn't the treasury dept have pictures of bills online?

[boris]

Interesting. It might be interesting to see how much of a bill it will accept. Or what part it focuses on. For example, snip off the corner of a dollar bill and try to scan that.

Or mask out various regions.

Maybe it's a "holographic" technique, and looks at the whole bill somehow.

Maybe it's reverse steganography, whatever that might be.

Hmm.

--Boris

[garbanzo]

I think it's time to call a few congresscritters and make 'em do something useful for a change. What's next - image viewing software that reports back to the government the content of your images?

[Tench_Coxe]

Actually, I would suspect that if they do not notify the customer on purchase that this feature exists in the software, there are certain contractural violations ( for example, someone selling you milk without teling you it contains syrup of ipecac ).

[RhoTheta]

Ping

[Hildy]

If this is your biggest worry in life, consider yourself lucky.

[Nick Danger]

it's not even close to actual-size, and it's not a "flat" portrayal - it's wavy, as if it's fluttering in the wind. Nor is it real-color.

Pattern recognition software certainly has come a long way. Recognizing currency under those conditions, in any reasonable amount of time, is amazing.

[cynwoody]

SoftIce ... You only need to change one bit of the program. You just have to find the right bit! It will still detect the bill, but it won't care anymore.

[neutrino]

Fascinating! I'm glad I didn't upgrade...

[B Knotts]

[GregoryFul]

Sounds like an urban myth to me. I doubt that pattern matcheing s/w is anywhere near capable of recognizing specific images of money.

[MississippiMan]

A friend of mine just opened a nice image of a dollar bill with nary a problem in Photoshop CS.

MM