If you’ve been tinkering with the idea of making some quick money by printing fake notes using Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, think again.
These applications will simply refuse to print fake notes and will instead show a warning message like the one below if you try the print command.
That’s because currency notes are often protected through EURion Constellation – it’s a secret pattern of symbols found banknote designs, including the American Dollar, Euro and the Indian Rupee, to help software easily detect that the image being edited is that of a currency note.
Apart from various image editing software, some scanners and photocopying devices also use this pattern to foil wannabe counterfeiters. Image via Reddit.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/printing-fake-currency-notes-disallowed-in-photoshop/7094/
Tags: Archives, counterfeit, currency, photoshop, printing, Internet
Reader Comments
I wonder what Amit was doing when he tried to print fake currency. ;)
Written by james on 02.05.09
GIMP FTW! (for counterfeiters) Open source wins again! Time to pop the bubbly.
Written by Ankur Banerjee on 02.05.09
And when your Xerox stops working because someone read this and had to see for themselves, just power down, wait for complete shutdown and restart. No need to “call for assistance”.
Written by Joseph Hoetzl on 02.05.09
Wowow! I’ve never known that my PS refuses this :)
Written by gofree on 02.05.09
Gee, Amit, it’s not like you to pick up on something old, although I guess this has resurfaced so fair comment. But, this has been known for years, there was even a hack to get around the problem although I dunno if it works in the latest version.
link
Written by David Bradley on 02.06.09
According to the wikipedia article you link to about EURion Constellation:
Users of recent versions of image editors, such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, discovered that these also refuse to print banknotes. According to an article in Wired magazine, the banknote detection code in these applications, called the Counterfeit Deterrence System (CDS), was designed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group and supplied to companies such as Adobe as a binary module. However, experiments by Steven J. Murdoch and others showed that this banknote detection code does not rely on the EURion pattern.[6] It instead detects a digital watermark embedded in the images, developed by Digimarc.[7]
But still very interesting. By the way, always enjoy your blog.
Written by Al W on 02.06.09
Well, the simplest solution to avoid this error message from photoshop is to use MS Word. Save images and import to Word. Then Print. I had printed some banknotes earlier for the school game, and there where only heads and numbers replaced from originals.
Written by iziTips on 02.08.09