When we are looking at magazines, photos on social media, or a photo someone sends us we might notice weird qualities about the image we are looking at. Sometimes, the arm gets bent weird and looks abnormal, a face might get random spots all over it, or a body might not match the face. This is probably because the image has been photoshopped, which is when someone alters the image in some way for many reasons. Regardless of the reason, it is always important to know how to tell if an image has been photoshopped.

Why Might Someone Photoshop Their Images?

People might photoshop their images for the following reasons:

• To make their bodies look better, whether it be to look skinnier or to enhance certain features about their body.
• To get rid of facial blemishes or other body image flaws.
• To make it look like they are somewhere they aren’t
• To put a face on a different body.
• To make it look like they can do something they actually can’t do, such as lifting something heavy.

How to Tell if an Image Has Been Photoshopped

Here are some ways on how to tell if an image has been photoshopped:

In this photo of Avril Lavigne, you can see that her image has been photoshopped. If you look at her arm, it looks normal near where her hand is but as you go up from her arm to her shoulder, you can see that her arm gets skinnier indicating that it has been photoshopped. To see if a person’s body has been altered,

In this photo, you will see that Britney’s face looks older in the original picture than in the magazine photo. This is because her face was altered for the magazine photo to make her look younger. If you see someone’s face look almost flawless, this could also be a sign that their image has been photoshopped.

When it comes to scammers, a lot of times they will photoshop a photo of themselves on a passport or a military ID. This is to show you proof that they are from where they say they are or they are part of the military, even though this “proof” is fake and photoshopped. If anyone sends you an image of their passport or military ID, they are a scammer.

In this picture a scammer created, they put their fake persona within a background with military vehicles. They were trying to create a photo that looked like the scammer was in a war. If the action in the background looks distanced, then most likely the image is photoshopped.

The top photo is the original image with Chef Gordon Ramsay in a hospital bed. The bottom two are photoshopped images done by scammers, where they took the faces of their fake personas and put them on Chef Ramsay’s body. This created the illusion that they were actually in the hospital bed, instead of Chef Ramsay. In these photos, you can tell they are photoshopped by comparing the skin tones of the faces to the body, as well as seeing that the faces don’t blend into the body naturally.

For this image, I edited the name out of it for confidentiality reasons. However, the rest of it was photoshopped by the scammer. Scammers like to photoshop someone holding a sign saying how much they love their victims. They put the victim’s name in the sign to make the victim believe they wrote them a sign to prove they are real. However, this is just a work of photoshop writing on the sign to trick their victims into believing they are real. Any time someone sends you a picture of them holding a sign, it is most likely fake.

Use Social Catfish’s Reverse Image Search For Your Photoshopped Image!

You can use Social Catfish’s reverse image search to see if the image you got has been photoshopped. If the person or background in your image was used elsewhere, our image search technology will be able to find if it’s been posted anywhere else on the Internet.

Here’s how to perform a reverse image search:

1. Upload a photo into the search bar above
2. Hit search and wait a few moments.
3. Sign up for a reverse image search membership
4. See what results pop up for your image!

If the person and/or background are anywhere else on the Internet, then chances are the image has been photoshopped.

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