With BP finally admitting it Photoshopped an image showing its "oil spill response center," it appears that people are finding all sorts of ridiculously bad photoshops done by BP in describing its response to the oil spill. Take, for example, the photo below: It doesn't take long to realize that the helicopter cockpit you're looking at is not actually in the air at all. In the upper lefthand corner, above the pilot's head, you can see an air traffic control tower. Oops. And, at the link above, they also zoom in on some of the panel instrumentation, suggesting that the door and ramp are open and the parking brake is engaged. Oh, and that document in the pilot's hand? Pre-flight checklist.

Perhaps BP is practicing in an effort to Photoshop the oil out of the gulf... However, somehow, I get the feeling it would leave some... artifacts.

Slashdot pointed us to this fun story about a scam artist who tried to get leniency from a judge by showing him photos of charity work he had done. The only problem? He Photoshopped himself into the photos and also forged letters from those charitable organizations. Not surprisingly, the judge didn't take too kindly to it, and gave him 285 months in prison -- 50 more than the sentencing guidelines allow -- because of the attempt to defraud the court.

Of course, I was thinking of doing a post on just that, when Karl Bode pointed me to the news that BP has also been caught messing around with Photoshopped images. Apparently, the images that BP has released of its oil spill "command center" are really, really, poorly Photoshopped. After being called on it, BP denied it, then sorta admitted it, but won't explain the details. Then, to make matters worse, it got caught with another Photoshopped image.

So, whether you're a petty criminal, or a giant multi-billion dollar multi-national, perhaps you should layoff the Photoshop when trying to make yourself look sympathetic.

Following last week's hubbub over Ralph Lauren and its lawyers sending bogus DMCA takedowns to sites who posted a Ralph Lauren ad that appeared to show an inhumanly skinny model, the company has put out a statement confessing that the ad was terrible:

"For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman's body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately."

That's nice and all... but it doesn't address the question of sending bogus takedown notices to both the Photoshop Disasters' webhost and Boing Boing's webhost. The fact that the company later admits that its photoshopping was done poorly actually makes the situation seem even worse -- as the company, rather than admit that at first, used a bogus legal proceeding to take down legitimate criticism -- criticism that the company itself is now admitting was perfectly legitimate.

Mr. LemurBoy points out that some French politicians are pushing a law that would require a label on any marketing or advertising image that was photoshopped, airbrushed or edited in some manner. The idea, of course, is that they don't want ad campaigns to portray things in a manner that is not quite truthful. But shouldn't there just be a simpler rule against deceptive advertising (one I imagine must already exist)? If it's just a little edit to make the photo more reasonable, why should it require some special disclosure?

Adobe made some news today by launching a free web-based low-end version of Adobe Photoshop. The idea is that Adobe hopes this will convince people to upgrade to the for-fee desktop software packages or (potentially) higher end online offerings from Adobe. This should be an interesting experiment for a variety of reasons. First, it definitely makes sense for Adobe to head down this path -- because if it didn't others would pop up and do the same (in fact there already are a few web-based Photoshop clones out there). So, joining this space earlier, rather than later, gives Adobe a chance to help define it, rather than be defined by it.

Adobe also has an advantage in the fact that it dominates this market. Even with free offerings like The Gimp out there, many graphic designers and photographers swear by the Photoshop interface and tools. The question, though, is how well this offering will be adopted. There are already some concerns about performance, which can matter a great deal when doing image editing. Furthermore, if this free online offering is there to serve as a way to push people to sign up for paid offerings, there will be pressures on the development team not to make the product as good as can be -- and that will keep open a wide opportunity for others to come in and provide a better product. No matter what, it's nice to see yet another large traditional client-side software provider experimenting with web-based offerings. Finally, simply porting a desktop software to the web isn't all that appealing. Services like Writely took off not because they were word processing clones (or free) but because they offered something useful that was different. In the case of Writely, it was the ability to do real-time collaboration over a document. So as long as Adobe focuses on creating those useful things that are different than what can be done on the desktop client, this could have some potential. But merely moving a feature-lacking version of a desktop client to the web probably isn't enough.