Ed Applying luma curve to photos and footage

[Mojo]

You know 9/11 did not actually happen on YouTube, right?

It wouldn't surprise me if there were people claiming it did.

 

[JayUtah]

Hi jay. Your posts have become some form of a joke to the user sackett.

I'm not sure if you were intending to poison the well, but you should know that everything is a joke to @sackett. He is our resident satirist, and well-beloved for it. Concentrate on making your case scientifically rather than trying to stir up divisions among your critics.

I appreciate your effort and time. I hope my future posts are able to answer some of your questions.

I hope that is the case. You have quite a backlog. I trust you will focus more of your future efforts on the merits of your claims rather than upon ham-fisted social engineering.

 

[Thermal]

The picture you supplied is far too pristine. It's sharp, well-focused, and probably first or second generation.

I'm using Adobe Photoshop 2025.

And there are your "halos."

Thanks for your work on that, it's exactly what I was asking about (I know nothing of the subject matter beyond recreational photoshopping).

Was a similar technology available in 2001, that could have layered the planes and buildings in such exquisite detail? I mean, on the original video tape its a different game that what we use now for digital image manipulation. Kind of reminds me of the idea of the moon landing footage being faked, when we didn't even have the tech to do so at the time.

 

[JayUtah]

I am not currently claiming a full theory with this presentation.

Then let me give you some advice from the perspective of a seasoned expert in forensic investigations. No one will respect your findings until you can place them in a narrative that more parsimoniously explains more observations. The difference between actual investigators and conspiracy theorists is that investigators are trying to find the one best narrative (an affirmative pursuit) while conspiracy theories are trying to find anything but a certain narrative. This leads them to flail untethered and untestable.

I only wanted to show the possibility that footage manipulation can be revealed by utilizing tools to display artifacts and composites.

The method you're using cannot do that.

You are purporting to recover information that cannot be in the images you are using. The method you are using ostensibly to reveal this information is conclusively the cause of the artifacts you're attributing to tampering. Your method has no semblance of scientific rigor; you're simply jumping to the desired conclusion.

I would expand on that later after i explore this photo analysis with the group.

Your analysis requires no further exploration. It is bunk.

 

[JayUtah]

Was a similar technology available in 2001, that could have layered the planes and buildings in such exquisite detail?

Combining digital images using alpha channels goes back to the 1970s. Commercial desktop video editing and compositing tools were easily available in 2001 (e.g., Final Cut Pro). Analog tools such as chromakeying and lumakeying are pretty much just as old. I'm not sure what standard of qualify you mean to ask about, but if you're talking about composition of video then it's just doing it frame by frame using the same techniques as you would for a still image.

The problem with @nt1's hypothesis is not that the technology didn't exist in 2001, but that it just doesn't work the way he thinks it does.

 

[nt1]

I note that several posts down you had to backpedal this answer.


Sadly it's not as easy as that. Improper terminology belies improper conceptualization.


Now you're getting closer to the right answer.

It's not just an "adjustment." It's a mapping accomplished by a function. You specify the function graphically by manipulating a graph of it in a GUI, but the mapping can be literally any function. As a function, the map exhibits all the algebraic behavior of a function. Importantly in your case, if the map function is non-invertible, the mapping is lossy. This is what is happening in your case. Thereafter, to make a claim that your mapping is somehow revealing more information than the original image is simply mathematically impossible.

Maps can work on any channel in the color space. It can also work on derived channels, which is what is happening implicitly in your method. This is why we use in-house tools rather than consumer products for actual image analysis. We can specify arbitrarily complex algebraic relationships between channels, or derive new channels in completely arbitrary ways. We can treat channels as signals in the classical sense. We're not limited to maps represented as graphs in a GUI.


You've described no process by which your luminance map reveals "unnatural light."

Your images contain no compositing layers. You seem to have been misled by a video describing images in the RGBA color space supported by the PNG image storage format. Since your images do not have alpha channels, that discussion is irrelevant.

Since you refuse to state a claim, we have to imagine the workflow you think might have happened. While editing an image in a commercial product that supports layers, it is common for composition to occur by placing the incoming element in a layer above the background. The incoming image has an alpha channel—what Adobe Photoshop calls a Layer Mask. This is a channel of information that determines how to render the upper layer with respect to the layers below.

For a background layer C and an adjacent upper layer D using the RGBA color space, the composition proceeds pixel-wise according to

R′_c = A_dR_d + (1-A_d) R_c
G′_c = A_dG_d + (1-A_d) G_c
B′_c = A_dB_d + (1-A_d) B_c

When this composition is made permanent—i.e., when the image is "flattened"—the alpha channels in the layers are discarded. Not only are they no longer needed, it would result in an inconsistent encoding were they allowed to remain in C′.

You're looking at single-layer images that you seem to believe have been created from multiple layers as a composite image. But the information you are claiming to be able to extract from the flattened image cannot exist in the flattened image. You can add a new alpha channel to C′ after the flattening operation. And if you store the image in a format such as PNG that supports storing alpha channels, then that channel will persist. But that new alpha channel has absolutely nothing to do with the layer masks that may have existed prior to flattening. Persistent composition must discard the information you are claiming to recover via a luminance map.


I have the knowledge and expertise to say conclusively that you are not accomplishing what you say you can. Your images do not conain the alpha channel information you say you are revealing, and in fact cannot contain it. Your method that purports to reveal "halos" that you attribute to evidence of tampering—residual alpha channel data—creates those artifacts through your misuse.


No. Expertise is not simply doing the same thing that novices do, only better.

Thanks jay! Great job. Thanks for the help.

 

[nt1]

I'm not sure if you were intending to poison the well, but you should know that everything is a joke to @sackett. He is our resident satirist, and well-beloved for it. Concentrate on making your case scientifically rather than trying to stir up divisions among your critics.


I hope that is the case. You have quite a backlog. I trust you will focus more of your future efforts on the merits of your claims rather than upon ham-fisted social engineering.

Thanks jay thats interesting.. I appreciate the help. Thanks for all the replies

 

[nt1]

Then let me give you some advice from the prospective of a seasoned expert in forensic investigations. No one will respect your findings until you can place them in a narrative that more parsimoniously explains more observations. The difference between actual investigators and conspiracy theorists is that investigators are trying to find the one best narrative (an affirmative pursuit) while conspiracy theories are trying to find anything but a certain narrative. This leads them to flail untethered and untestable.


The method you're using cannot do that.

You are purporting to recover information that cannot be in the images you are using. The method you are using ostensibly to reveal this information is conclusively the cause of the artifacts you're attributing to tampering. Your method has no semblance of scientific rigor; you're simply jumping to the desired conclusion.


Your analysis requires no further exploration. It is bunk.

Understood. Appreciated. Thanks for all the help. Ill review it and use it the best i can. Thanks jay

 

[Thermal]

Combining digital images using alpha channels goes back to the 1970s. Commercial desktop video editing and compositing tools were easily available in 2001 (e.g., Final Cut Pro). Analog tools such as chromakeying and lumakeying are pretty much just as old. I'm not sure what standard of qualify you mean to ask about, but if you're talking about composition of video then it's just doing it frame by frame using the same techniques as you would for a still image.

The problem with @nt1's hypothesis is not that the technology didn't exist in 2001, but that it just doesn't work the way he thinks it does.

I get that. What I'm wondering about is the quality of the finished "masked" imagery. I don't recall video FX being anywhere near that convincing at the turn of the century.

 

[nt1]

Combining digital images using alpha channels goes back to the 1970s. Commercial desktop video editing and compositing tools were easily available in 2001 (e.g., Final Cut Pro). Analog tools such as chromakeying and lumakeying are pretty much just as old. I'm not sure what standard of qualify you mean to ask about, but if you're talking about composition of video then it's just doing it frame by frame using the same techniques as you would for a still image.

The problem with @nt1's hypothesis is not that the technology didn't exist in 2001, but that it just doesn't work the way he thinks it does.

Thats really helpful. Thanks jay. Youve been a rock star. One of a kind. I really appreciate your hard work. Enjoy your day. Good job bro.

 

[varwoche]

You know 9/11 did not actually happen on YouTube, right?

It stands to reason that people who make claims like nt1 do so because they think it was a controlled demolition. If that were true, the extent of the conspiracy would be vast beyond belief, requiring the cooperation of al queda among countless others. And then there's the absurd notion of timing the demolition with the planes.

The concept that it actually only happened on YouTube is no more absurd.

 

[sackett]

Something that cranks can never understand, much less acknowledge, is just how staggeringly boring they are.

With the expansion of the internet, we find ourselves stuck in the greatest imaginable age of crankery. So it's not at all surprising that their dulness is plastered everywhere.

Times were once different, he said, creaking back in his rocker and spitting on the stove. Cranks, loons, florid eccentrics, and similar madmen were fairly novel specimens. They were diverting for short periods, and you could quit their company by just literally walking away.

And I'm the authority here because I'm 3 days older than the Battle of Midway. I go back to the mimeoed newsletter! I've seen dead ringers for Max Crumb ranting at the empty air on street corners! I tuned in (on cold nights when AM reception was good) to Dr. Curtis D. Springer, coming to you on the Natural Foods Network from Xxyzyxx Springs, California!

Do I make it sound funny? Well, it was, in a trifling way, like Mad Magazine until you turned 13.

 

[Thermal]

For a lot of younger people, the whole event only exists as a YouTube video, and it stands to reason (from their perspective) that it could all be faked. I lived a little south of NYC on 9/11 (still do) and I have five buds that were in Manhattan that day and two who had good seats. It really gets under my skin to have people saying there were no planes or it didn't even happen. Real people that some of us have known for years before the event were there. They are still alive.

 

[nt1]

Hi thermal

2001 does not show a natural gradient. A smooth natural transition of color

Then in 1999 a mostly clear sky. shows a gradient. The color smoothly transitions

This is a type of issue exposed through curve manipulation

The one in 2001 does not behave naturally.

 

[JayUtah]

I get that. What I'm wondering about is the quality of the finished "masked" imagery. I don't recall video FX being anywhere near that convincing at the turn of the century.

It depends mostly on how much time you want to spend on it. Much of the editing in the video world back then was online editing. That's when you're manipulating the video streams in real time at display frame rates. In contrast, offline editing is when you take all the video elements into a back room and spend as much time as you want. In both cases a lot of compositing was done via "video toasters" and "digital paintboxes" that sacrificed quality for frame rate, ease of use, etc. That's where you get such things as the Bob Ross intro where he "paints" that week's picture with a broom-sized paintbrush. That was garbage even by 1980s standards, but if you took the time to properly isolate the layers and finesse your alpha channel, you could get good results.

 

[Thermal]

Hi thermal

2001 does not show a natural gradient. A smooth natural transition of color

Then in 1999 a mostly clear sky. shows a gradient. The color smoothly transitions

This is a type of issue exposed through curve manipulation

The one in 2001 does not behave naturally.

Ok, but reasoning it through, all the footage appears identical to what was filmed by private individuals from various angles, and consistent with the hundreds of eyewitness accounts. There doesn't appear to be any footage that shows anything different.

So what do we make of that? That no footage was obtained by anyone independently, and only planted/doctored footage has been shown? I find that kind of practically impossible on its face, which leads me to want to explore another explanation for the perceived anomaly.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

That is quite accurate to my main theory.

I believe that there was prefabricated footage to match the event. To allow any errors to be masked.

What people saw very closely simulated the footage seen.

I could expand on this at any length at your request...

You think some of the video supposedly from 9/11 was pre-recorded?

And you suppose this was to allow any errors to be masked. How would that work?

I mean for example what if one of the planes missed its tower because those passengers had managed to storm the cockpit? What would be the point of having a pre-recorded video of the plane hitting the tower?

Anything which did not go to plan, such as the Shanksville crash, would be shown to have happened just as they did in every form of evidence except for these pre-recorded videos.

You could not release such videos and claim they were real if they contradicted radar, radio and phone calls, eyewitnesses, crash site debris and other authentic photos and videos.

 

[JayUtah]

2001 does not show a natural gradient. A smooth natural transition of color

No, not after you smash all the assumptions in the quantization and encoding methods with your luminosity hammer. An image encoded for efficient storage and transmission is allowed to take shortcuts that are invisible to the eye. This is why we do not generally attempt image analysis on lossy-compressed images. You're not revealing tampering. You're revealing artifacts appropriate to quantization and encoding. You're not doing something as a novice that a professional would just do better and arrive at the same suspicions as you. You're doing something that a professional would know to avoid.

Then in 1999 a mostly clear sky. shows a gradient. The color smoothly transitions

...in an image encoded with different parameters and quantization constraints.

This is a type of issue exposed through curve manipulation

No.

The only "issue" at hand is that you really don't understand how images are encoded, quantized, compressed, and stored digitally. You're applying random mappings that reveal nothing more than exactly what is expected to be in digital images represented in various formats.

 

[catsmate]

Hi cats. I have had 189 messages in 48 hours. Is that your only input and the only sentence you would like to quote me on?

I hope you have a good day. Let me know if you would like to join the conversation. I would enjoy talking with you.

I have seen numerous twoofers come and go. So far Yiu have presented nothing new

 

[Steve]

That is quite accurate to my main theory.

I believe that there was prefabricated footage to match the event. To allow any errors to be masked.

What people saw very closely simulated the footage seen.







I could expand on this at any length at your request. With references and citations from info in the public domain. Some would be direct facts. Some would be inference supplied with multiple examples to show cause for concern.

You have no theory, as thinking persons understand the meaning of the word. Even as a hypothesis your words are lacking coherence.