Dear Tip Tuesday aficionados, welcome to this brand new tip! Today we’re dealing with Amped Authenticate, the most complete software for image integrity and authenticity analysis you can find out there. If you installed the latest, recent update, you may have noticed that a lot of new features were added. But there’s one thing we worked on a whole lot and we really don’t want you to miss: the totally renewed and enriched Samples Folder. This tip will show you why that folder is definitely worth a look.
Image authentication is not a trivial task. It requires proper tools and proper training. That’s why we put huge effort in keeping Authenticate up to date, not just from the “features” point of view: we constantly strive to improve our training courses and provide you with new samples to test the software on.
In the last release, we’ve completely rebuilt Authenticate’s Samples Folder. If you have Authenticate, it’s already installed. (If you don’t have Authenticate, it’s not too late: redeem yourself at this link!) You can access your Samples Folder by clicking on Help -> Open Samples Folder.
You’ll be presented with the following folder list:
We have 15 sorted items. In each folder, you’ll find one or more “evidence” image file, possibly a folder containing additional files that are used as part of the sample, and an Amped Authenticate Project (.aap) file. Just drag the project file into Authenticate’s interface, and let the magic begin! For example, this is what you get when you open the project file in folder 02 – document.
You see Authenticate has loaded the .aap file, populating the Project panel on the bottom-left. The project shows how we’d handle the case. There’s a Preliminary Analysis step, which focuses on Visual Inspection and examination with the File Format filter. Just double click on any item in the project tree to open it and see the comments we’ve put there for you.
You see we provided a list of observations and set the Status flag to “Warning”, so to signal that we found suspicious elements that call for further analyses.
The example thus continues with Integrity Analysis, (where you can see the EXIF filter showed something suspicious as well), then with Global Processing Analysis and eventually Local Analysis, where warnings literally swarm!
All of the above was just for one single sample (02 – document), and you have 15 of them! For example, don’t forget to take a look at sample 08 – source camera. After loading it, you’ll notice that the sample is actually a tutorial on how to use the Camera Identification tool.
Remember that with the latest Authenticate release, you can generate reports from your projects. Incidentally, that’s also an excellent way to create a “samples booklet” by generating the PDF report for each sample! For example, this is the beginning of the (15 pages) PDF report generated for the sample 06 – siena:
We’ll say it loud and clear: no “Samples Folder” will ever replace a training course. Samples show you a proper workflow, but can’t teach you the theory and principles behind choices we’ve made; each case is obviously different and needs different decisions. Moreover, you can’t ask questions to samples, while our trainers happily answer your questions and doubts. That said, just think how Authenticate’s samples may be helpful when you need to refresh concepts you learned during training! Or if you need to show a colleague what Authenticate can do. Or again, you may try to work your way with each sample, and then compare your results with those we obtained (and, please, if you spot something wrong or missing, tell us!).
We would also be excited to receive interesting cases that you’d like to share with other users: we may add them to future releases’ samples (provided you give us the permission to share them, of course).
This week’s take away is: make the most of your purchase! Amped Authenticate and Amped FIVE both come with a samples folder that provides a lot of insights about what you can do with Amped software!
