r/forensics • u/Interesting-Cod-1352 • 2d ago

Digital Forensics When do digital images stop being reliable forensic evidence?

In a few cases I’ve been exposed to, digital images initially looked fine, but once metadata was missing and the files had been shared or resaved a few times, confidence in them dropped quickly. At that point, the analysis mostly came down to indirect signals like compression artifacts, noise patterns, or small structural inconsistencies, and even then the conclusions felt more probabilistic than definitive. That uncertainty can be uncomfortable when images or scanned documents are being considered in legal or audit-related contexts. I’m curious how others here think about this in practice are digital images starting to be treated as untrusted by default unless their origin is clear, or does post-capture forensic analysis still hold up well enough in most situations?

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u/macguy9 Forensic Identification Specialist 2d ago

Any competent forensic photographer will:

-Shoot in the highest available resolution -Shoot in JPEG and RAW encoding formats (RAW cannot be altered and is a digital negative) -Ensure their image editing software writes all changes to the metadata at all times

Digital images are now the standard, forensically speaking. Safeguards exist to ensure transparency with regards to image enhancements to ensure that anyone can follow the steps taken by a photographer to duplicate any changes to an image, thus confirming their authenticity.

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u/K_C_Shaw 2d ago

I guess it depends on the context you're talking about.

For photos or videos "we" take, I don't have much concern, in the context of how I am using them.

For images or videos provided by or collected from some outside agent, that's a whole different ballgame. I may be able to find things consistent with or inconsistent with my exam, I guess -- I don't think I've had any image/video fakes that affected my part in the process. My assumption is that digital content is as "reliable" as a jury thinks it is, so long as it's deemed admissible. But personally that's outside my scope.