Identification of copy–paste regions in digital image

In recent technocrat world, an alteration of a digital image is more ubiquitous amongst techno‐savvy professionals, which has also been proved recurrent even for laymen. This has been popularized on account of a lucid access of different types of image‐editing software. Copying a particular region from a digital image to selective location within the same image is one of the good citations of image doctoring. Usually, the bitmap pictures are represented in the form of three‐channel color image, in which the algorithm identifies the similar areas with an assumption of image acquisition in 24 bits Bitmap format. In the present article, an exclusive procedure was applied to produce an output image, pinpointing the copy–paste area with more than 90% accuracy. The resultant image was depicting a forgery operation presumed to be performed, which determined two areas of similarity. A novel approach of 1‐connected graph was applied, as the forgery is not believed to be done in the form of a petite point‐like area. Finally, the forgery area was exposed with an aid of discerning color value, commonly as a black color for an apparent visibility of an image. The present application will be a tool in image forensics that can be applicable to identify the copy–paste regions in a single bitmap image. This article refers to a new approach for detecting the image portions which are copied from another image. Besides, the present investigation discusses an algorithm effectively implemented to determine the areas formed by copy–paste operation in an image. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 20, 367–369, 2010