🔬 Photo Forensics

A darkroom loupe for a single still. Load an image — it never leaves this device, no upload, no server, no network. Sweep it for signs of editing: error levels, luminance gradients, isolated channels, and a pixel-exact magnifier. A local clone of the classic forensic-magnifier idea; every pass runs in your browser.

🖼️ Drop an image here or click to choose

JPEG, PNG, WebP. ELA works best on JPEGs. Large images are scaled to fit.

How to read each pass

Original	The image as loaded. Baseline for the loupe.
ELA	Error Level Analysis — re-saves the image as JPEG and amplifies the difference. Untouched regions of a JPEG settle to a uniform low error; pasted or edited areas often glow brighter or sit at a different level. Only meaningful on originally-JPEG images.
Luminance gradient	Sobel edge direction, mapped to colour. Smooth surfaces read as flat gradients; splices and clone-stamps break the flow with mismatched direction or hard seams.
Level sweep	Isolates a narrow brightness band and stretches it to full contrast. Slide the level to walk the tonal range — hidden gradients, JPEG blocks, and painted-over regions surface here.
Channels	Red / Green / Blue in isolation. Chroma edits and channel-specific compression artifacts stand out when the other two are muted.
High-pass	Subtracts a blurred copy to leave only fine detail — resampling grids, sharpening halos, and texture mismatches.

Forensics is suggestive, not proof. A bright ELA region can be a genuine high-detail edge; a clean pass can hide a careful edit. Read the passes together, and treat findings as leads.