PRNU‐based detection of facial retouching

Abstract

Nowadays, many facial images are acquired using smart phones. To ensure the best outcome, users frequently retouch these images before sharing them, e.g. via social media. Modifications resulting from used retouching algorithms might be a challenge for face recognition technologies. Towards deploying robust face recognition as well as enforcing anti-photoshop legislations, a reliable detection of retouched face images is needed. In this work, the effects of facial retouching on face recognition are investigated. A qualitative assessment of 32 beautification apps is conducted. Based on this assessment five apps are chosen which are used to create a database of 800 beautified face images. Biometric performance is measured before and after retouching using a commercial face recognition system. Subsequently, a retouching detection system based on the analysis of photo response non-uniformity (PRNU) is presented. Specifically, scores obtained from analysing spatial and spectral features extracted from PRNU patterns across image cells are fused. In a scenario, in which unaltered bona fide images are compressed to the average sizes of the retouched images using JPEG, the proposed PRNU-based detection scheme is shown to robustly distinguish between bona fide and retouched images achieving an average detection equal error rate of 13.7% across all retouching algorithms.