Content Credentials explained

Fight the fakes and prove your own photos are genuine with provenance tools in Photoshop and Lightroom

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Trust in photography is at an all-time low. In an era of GenAl and deep fakes, any image must, by necessity, have its authenticity questioned. As such, there is more need than ever for tools we photographers can use to prove our images are genuine. We want transparency in AI image editing and a bulletproof digital signature for our own photos.

The Content Credentials Initiative could be part of the solution. Spearheaded by Adobe, the idea is to create an ecosystem of trust, embodied by a 'CR' watermark pinned to images, that reveals a trail of provenance. Built into Photoshop and Lightroom, this feature lets us create a kind of log that accompanies the image to show others not just who created it, but also what changes have been made.

The idea behind this is that it's more practical to prove an image is genuine than to show it is fake. At the moment, it's an opt-in solution for those willing to be transparent but there are plenty of heavyweight backers, including Microsoft, the BBC, Canon, Leica, Sony and Nikon. In an ideal world, there may come a point when - driven by a social need for genuine, trustworthy content - if an image doesn't have this kind of certification, its veracity should be in doubt.

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