50 Pics That Got Unfiltered So Hard, Instagram’s Algorithm Had To Look Away

With filters, retouching software, and smart apps at everyone's fingertips, it's hard to know what's real on social-media images. But there are some telltale signs that make you an expert at sniffing out when someone has used too much of the digital editor's magic. By training your eye to notice lighting cues, texture discrepancies, geometry out-of-placeness, metadata anomalies, and contextual incoherence, you'll be a human lie detector scroll after scroll.

Natural light is governed by laws of physics: if the sun's on the left, highlights and shadows will be similarly on the left throughout the image. When you see a face or body radiantly lit against a background darker still, or shadows that cast in unlike directions, that's typically a sign someone selectively lit or composited two images together. A lit model might appear stuck over a nighttime cityscape with no light spill on surrounding objects corresponding, for instance.

Slimming and body-shaping tools compress or stretch areas of an image, but will warp straight lines in the process. Lamp posts get subtly warped, door frames curve outward, and tile floors appear as if they're wobbling. Check edges parallel to the frame of the photo, walls, floors, tables, carefully and see if they're still straight. Any wiggle is a tip-off that the "liquify" or warp tool has been used on the subject.

Clone-stamp and healing-brush tools enable you to cover up blemishes or unwanted items, but these have a tendency to drop in the same areas of texture as identical patches where they should be random. Scan for repeating items on textures of clothes, leaves, or skin surfaces, two identical shaped leaves, repeated stone patterns, or repeated freckles. If you notice one repeat, the entire cloned area normally becomes noticeable.

Untouched, raw skin has pores, minute hairs, and invisible color transitions. Zooming in on a doctored face, you might find a plastic-smooth surface without pores, loose hairs, and evenly-colored skin devoid of variation. But eyes or lips could be hyper-defined against a soft-focused background, i.e., selective sharpening or detail-enhancing filters were used. Authentic portraits are in balance with softness and texture; anything excessively idealized is a red flag.

Mirrors, sunglasses, water, and shiny floors should show the scene accurately. If you notice an empty mirror in the background of a character, a reflection that shows an alternate pose, or water that is not reflecting the person or surroundings, someone has likely gone in and touched up the image. The same applies to shadows on feet and objects, broken or misplaced shadows usually accompany cut-and-paste work.

If you can retrieve the original image file, check its metadata (EXIF data) through a photo-previewing application or on-line EXIF viewer. Metadata may reveal what image-editing application was used, alter timestamps, and camera settings. A Photoshop stamp or a program name like "Facetune" in metadata is a give-away that the photo has been manipulated.

Finally, look at the larger picture. Does the spot where the image was taken fit in with other photos of the same location? Do different entries from the same account have varying body proportions or background information? Reverse-image search sites such as Google Images or TinEye can assist you in discovering earlier unedited versions of a photograph or finding where it originally appeared online.

By keeping an eye out for these inconsistencies, lighting and shadow orientation, sheared geometry, replicated texture, unnatural skin tone, shattered reflections, color anomalies, metadata warning signs, and contextual mismatches, you'll be better poised to recognize the filters for what they are. And when you catch one doctored detail, you'll usually find a whole chain of fiddles under the surface, and that's when the real story behind the doctored post begins to emerge.