Photoshop Censorship

[Ilwrath]

Anyone actually test this?  To me, it sounds like paranoia of some of the new text in Adobe's EULA....

[Ilwrath]

Hmm... And exactly as I suspected, Photoshop CS had no problem opening a scan of a 2004 series 20USD that I scanned at 300dpi.

I say this is complete nonsense.  Someone's going to have to post a test sample to prove otherwise.

[Ilwrath]

"The current implementation of CDS will prevent you from scanning in banknotes [...]"

Ah..... THAT may be the case.  I didn't use a TWAIN image acquisition.  I run BetaScan on my old Mustek SCSI scanner.  Certainly there is nothing in Photoshop that stops you from opening certain images based on image content.

I bet current TWAIN drivers tag images as "restricted" when they encounter certain moire patterns (patterns used to intentionally disrupt copiers).

Photoshop then respects the "restricted" tag, and refuses to open the image.  So, photoshop isn't making a judgement on the image, it is just respecting the "restricted" flag, which shouldn't be set, unless the image had a certain pattern in it when it was scanned.

That would be a way to get that sort of thing into computers without much fuss or hassle.  And, under current laws, I believe it would be illegal to remove the moire detecting code from scanners/drivers, just as it is illegal to remove it from modern copiers.

I should try this on my mum's new HP scanner and see what happens.

[Ilwrath]

I saw them demo this on TchTV's "The Screen Savers" Friday show. Photoshop CS would not scan a US $20 bill. They said other currencies as well, but didn't show this. Nothing was said about opening scans made by other means...  

Yeah... This would be consistant with the modern scanners being able to recognize moire patterns.  I imagine that the detection is happening in the TWAIN driver, and then being passed on as a restricted image, which Photoshop CS refuses to touch.  Photoshop 6 and 7 both respected the "Copyrighted" image flag, as well, so it doesn't seem much of a stretch that they'd handle a restricted flag.

So keep your old software

At least keep the knowledge of how to scan things directly into an image, without using a standardized TWAIN driver.  ;-)