What techniques or tools can be used to show that a UFO or cryptid has been manually added to an image on a web page?

Question

People sometimes post images showing alleged UFOs, cryptids, or other unusual content.

Are there techniques or tools can be used to conclusively show that the UFO/cryptid/etc has been manually added to the image?

Answer 1

People sometimes post images showing alleged UFOs, cryptids, or other unusual content. Are there techniques or tools can be used to conclusively show that the UFO/cryptid/etc has been manually added to the image?

Conclusively - about never.

But if you have a digital image there are often visual clues available.

Grossly increase gamma to blow up background "black level" - you can often see clear changes in background around insertions.

Zoom to 100% or more and go around borders - you can often see edge artefacts where pattern match has not followed outline well enough.

Again at high zoom, you can often see changes in patterns which appear consistent at normal magnifications but which show cloning at high zoom.

Also look for background areas which should be affected by possible insert but are not.

Perfect test: ALL UFOs and cryptids are fake.

Answer 2

They don't need post processing to add a 'ufo'. They can just hang a pie plate with fishing line and take a badly out of focus shot. Software won't detect these super simple fake ones.