BP oil spill

All eyes were on BP in the aftermath of the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, caused by the blowout of one of the oil giant's wells on April 20, 2010. Which made it an odd time for the company to try to pass off Photoshopped official images of its clean-up efforts.

It was astute members of the blogosphere that first noticed problems with the images. BP eventually acknowledged that a contract photographer not only used Photoshop for the usual color correction, glare reduction, and cropping, but also to cut and paste three images. The shots were removed from the BP.com site, but remain on the company's Flickr page in both original and edited versions for comparison and "for transparency."

For example, this shot taken from inside a helicopter was doctored to make it appear as if it was in the air. But among the problems, note the control tower still in the left corner of the photograph as well as white space around the shoulder of one of the pilots.

May 5, 2011 11:57 AM PDT

Photo by: BP

| Caption by: CNET News staff