Words by: Shaihiem Allen
Adobe will soon launch an option on Photoshop that will verify the credentials of anyone selling an NFT called ‘Content Credentials’, and sellers will be able to link their Adobe account to their crypto-wallet to provide the authenticity of the content being sold.
First off, what is an NFT?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. To put it simply, ‘non-Fungible’ means that the item being sold is unique and one of a kind. For example, Bitcoin is something that is fungible as you can own one Bitcoin and trade it or another Bitcoin of the exact same value. Something like the original Mona Lisa for example, is non-fungible as only The Louvre owns the original, you can purchase a copy of it but there will only ever be one original which makes it unique and one of a kind.
How do they work?
NFTs were originally a part of the Ethereum blockchain, Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, kind of like Bitcoin, however, what makes it different is that it supports NFTs, which stores extra information and works differently to an ETH coin.
An NFT can be almost anything digital, from a piece of art, a GIF, a song or even a tweet! (The founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for just under $3 million).
What makes NFTs so confusing is that someone could pay millions for an image or a video, and it could be downloaded and distributed by anyone for free. NFTs provide you with something that can’t be copied; ownership of the original work (go back to our example of the Mona Lisa, The Louvre owns the original. However, you could have 100 copies of it in your house if you wanted to, but they still will never be worth the price of the original). This piece of art by Beeple sold for $69 million and if you wanted, you could download the exact image from the website, and own an identical copy of what someone just purchased for millions, however, as mentioned previously NFTs provide ownership of the original.
Where does Photoshop come into this?
Now that I’ve explained NFTs and how they work, time to talk about the main point of the article. Photoshop will allow content creators to prove that they are the original author for a piece of digital art being sold, as I’ve already mentioned, anyone can just right click and save an identical copy of a piece of digital art, some people could then try to sell them as their own NFTs, which is essentially art theft. Adobe’s new feature on Photoshop will allow people to verify which is the actual original and allow the right creator to get paid, although this may not stop art theft it’s a way to prove the NFT you’re selling is legit.
NFTs aren’t the only thing that will benefit from Adobe’s Content Credentials, which are a result of its Content Authenticity Initiative. The company is launching the system as a beta, and users can use it to show what edits were made to a file in Photoshop, tag their stock images on Adobe’s system, and more.