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CSI EFFECTReal life digital imaging cannot create the kind of resulting images that some television shows would like us to believe.Studio digital special effects editors on the other hand, using what we like to call reverse digital engineering, can give you that impression however. You get the idea. Start with a studio quality image, then blur it down and pixelate it. Play it backwards, and wow, what an effect! The CSI effect is the theory that juries may now sometimes expect impossible forensic results to be the norm, and therefore assume that because it wasn’t, or because a fingerprint wasn’t found, that the suspect is not guilty. That despite other evidence to the contrary that would convict. We’ve all seen the shows; the distant CCTV image, reflected off a window no less, from a building down the street, then magically de-pixelated into a studio quality portrait of the bad guy. I think almost everyone understands it doesn’t quite work that way, at least I hope they do. Data only believed to exist at a distant tiny pixel resolution, cannot be magically replicated and enlarged by digital interpolation. For accurate enlargements, the data would have to exist in the first place. Often what we see, is digital compression artifacts further enlarged, that take on a whole new life in the image on their own. Artifacts are simply a byproduct of compression, and are sometimes mistaken for part of the original image. The images below show a series of un-touched, digital enlargements, and the fact this simply creates a larger blurry copy of the original. Clarification techniques can be used to make the image more pleasing to the eye for general photography, however for forensic applications, this can translate to removing what might be unique detail needed for comparison. |
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