For some reason I kept getting an error, 'message body left empty' in trying to respond to your response back to me, but it seems to be working here.
Ah, so you're getting that too. It looks like the presence of emoji in my post is breaking parts of the forum. I shall investigate and fix Soon™.
Cool, weird, I've never run into that error before.
We're both half right about exporting RAWs.
Nope. I'm not budging on this. You are entirely wrong.
I'm not budging either. You are mostly wrong.
Correct, exporting a raw file from Lightroom is trivial, but it doesn’t achieve what you claim or contend. In LR, take a CR2 raw file and edit it in manner of your choosing. Export it to a folder using the file type as “Original”. LR exports two files, a CR2 and an XMP file. The CR2 file is the same you imported in its original form the camera sensor, no edits. The XMP file contains your edits.
That's only one way to do it. You can also export it using Camera Raw. Though, as I said, it would be fairly easy to detect, since the XML data would have to be embedded into it. We can agree that the CR2 file *wasn't* edited in Lightroom, if that really matters to you. To the actual point, it doesn't matter in the slightest.
When you export via Camera Raw, same thing, it creates a sidecar .XMP file with the edits made, the CR2 remains unaffected and original. And the only close to 'raw-ish' export that I could find that embeds the changes in a single file is the .DNG option - Which is not a CR2 file.
The point is that you initially stated that 'faking' a CR2 file post edit could be done easily via LR. It can't. Not without also including the accompanying .XMP file. The CR2 file remains unchanged from when it hit the camera sensor. So if I give you just the CR2 file post edit from LR without the .XMP file, you will get the original from the camera. Which is not what you implied. Same thing from Camera RAW.
Now as for that blogger's technique of manually editing/creating the 4 files embedded in a RAW file and recombining them to look like an original RAW, I couldn’t figure out exactly how s/he did that. But it appears it could be done. Seemed kind of laborious. And as for the scripts to do so, a little above my pay grade to run python scripts.
Let's start by ensuring that "the blogger" is granted due respect. Secondly, I can only assure you that this process is extremely easy. Academics have already done the hard work for you, and any competent user of a modern computer will be able to produce a falsified CR2 in a matter of minutes. Lazy comments to the effect of "I can't be bothered to figure out how to run a script" make your argument extremely weak.
The process, at its core, is simple. You unpack the container, extract the image data, alter it as you please, produce appropriate thumbnails, and pack it all back. As the author rightly points out, there is nothing special about CR2 files. Nothing stopping you from editing it. This whole "CR2 files prove that the image is not altered" claim has been a meme in the crypto and stegano communities for years now, because despite its utterly asinine basis, people somehow fall for it.
I didn't mean to diss the 'blogger' by any means, he's a professor on the topic. But to say, "a competent user of a modern computer" can pull this off is not accurate and dismissive of the competence that is actually required. It's complicated and his 16 step script is not for the faint of heart, even for a competent user of a modern computer. And as to asserting that I can’t be bothered to figure it out, I never claimed that. I am bothered and have bothered, but python instances/scripts and command line stuff is currently above my knowledge base - My point was that this takes some computer savvy that I don’t possess and the majority of users don’t possess either. Though you make it sound like any old computer owner could just dive right in and have at it. I beg to differ.
As for the manual way he described to do it, I found some 'unpacking' CR2 scripts and tried them. The ones I found extracted the JPEG thumbnail and JPEG preview and some index files, but not the raw TIFF that seems to be the CR2 core raw image, the latter you want to alter to fake and then just repack it with the updated JPEGs. I couldn’t figure out how to manually unpack the files, let alone repacking them. I don't doubt it can be done, but it doesn't seem super simple either.
But to you point, it can be done, but not necessarily easily and not necessarily 'off the shelf'. To my point, it doesn’t work as suggested straight out of a program like LR.
I reject both of these claims. It can be done with Lightroom (though easily detectable without appropriate plugins), and it can be done easily in a matter that's difficult to detect.
This argument continues to be an insult to everyone's intelligence. We're not here to deliver basic IT education.
I reject your rejection of my claims that were rejecting your initial claims.
Again I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m just saying it can’t be done the way you initially described by using ‘off the shelf’ programs. As well, I agree, saying that CR2 (or any other camera RAW format) can’t be edited and faked as the original is not an end all/be all argument for authenticity. But a lot more is involved to fake one than just poking on some buttons in a program. So, for example, if Soundly wanted to fake all of his RAW causeway images, he could. But a fair amount of work and knowhow would be involved. That's a hefty charge and assumption that someone would go through all that effort to create fakes. And perhaps assuming that just b/c one doesn’t like their results?
It’s a sad day if and when we find out REr’s and FEr’s are faking their photos. Kinda takes the fun out of everything.
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