Are there any studies on "I can tell from some of the pixels"? Over the years I keep coming across both people (and myself) on internets being correct on 'shopped photos while masses belivied in. Is this just down to familiarity with software and a health bit of skepticism?
I think it's the healthy skepticism that's more important than being able to detect some minute detail in an edit. For a while photos were considered strong proof, not so much today.
There has been research on detecting photo manipulation and there's plenty of things people can watch out for if they're trying to "prove" an image was altered, but a lot of edits I see are so bad/obvious that the people making them aren't really trying to "fool" anyone with them. They just think it makes the photo look better. They'll do things like jack up color saturation to impossible/unnatural levels, or remove every pore from their skin, etc.
