I suppose right about now you are sick of hearing any more of BP’s BS. Whether it is buying google rankings or not telling their douchebag CEO to keep his petty thoughts to himself – I know one thing’s for certain: BP’s PR disasters have just about rivaled their environmental one.

Well, now they have another disaster on their hands and this one is of the Photoshop variety…

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Someone over at AMERICAblog News noticed that something was amiss in the photo of the control room posted to BP’s website (above). The photo shows a bunch of guys sitting around looking at monitors of oil spill footage. I guess BP was trying to show that they were just sitting there helplessly watching oil gush into the Gulf like the rest of us? I dunno. Anyway, looks like they weren’t even doing that because the photo was faked. Yep, that’s right! BP couldn’t even get a legitimate photo of guys sitting in a room watching oil spill footage on monitors. Those photos must be hard to come by at BP. Check out the closeup below – you can easily see the halos – and by halos I don’t mean the angelic kind, I mean the Seriously, you couldn’t even spend the 10 minutes it would take to do this properly? You are making it THAT obvious you don’t care? Why don’t you just kick us all in the nuts while you’re at it? kind…

The worst kind of halos.

AMERICAblog News has the complete rundown of the disasters found in this Shop, so check out the link to the enlargement above and see if you can spot them all before heading over there. It will be like a very, very sad game of Where’s Waldo? (And what’s even sadder is now the game is on to locate other PR photos BP has faked and people are finding them.)

BP has admitted that the photo was faked and that “… there had been no ill intent behind the alteration, and that the photographer had simply been showing off his Photoshop skills.”

Um, yeah, or LACK THEREOF.

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Publicity chief for the Democratic Action Party in Malaysia, Jeffrey Wong Su En, thought it was a good idea to send out a press release (along with the above photo) stating he had been Knighted. It seems titles are all the rage in Malaysia these days, and short of “Duke” or “Lord” what better title could one have?

Well, Buckingham Palace begged to differ with Wong and it caused the British High Commission spokesperson in Kuala Lumpur to say, “We can confirm that we have no record of any honour having been conferred at any time by the British Government on Jeffery Wong Su En.”

OK, so where did he get the photo? From here – he just Shopped himself over Ross Brawn.

Wong still protests that he was, in fact, knighted despite the overwhelming evidence he was not. He is (rightfully so) now facing expulsion from his political party.

Related articles…

Malaysian politician faked pictures of knighthood from the Queen [Telegraph.co.uk]

Malaysian politico gets knighted in Photoshop [The Register]

Stir over DAP man’s ‘Sir’ title [Star Online]

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Above is Paul the Octopus – a “psychic” octopus that the Germans rely on to pick the winners of World Cup matches. (Supposedly during the 2008 European Championship, Paul correctly predicted 80 percent of all German games.) Well, looks like someone is trying to artificially pump up (or hoax) Spain’s fan base. They took a photo of Paul from his “psychic pick” for the Germany-Serbia World Cup match and Shopped Spain’s flag (well, most of it – they left off the crest) over Serbia’s.

Related articles…

Desperate Spain fakes World Cup octopus prediction [NBC Sports]

Paul the Oracle Octopus Picks Spain Over Germany? It’s a Fraud [NowPublic]

UPDATE 7/6/2010: At the big event today Paul wound up picking Spain! See fakers? You didn’t have to even bother! Doesn’t it feel better when it’s for real?

Left: Osama Bin Laden in 1998 (AP Photo); Middle: the FBI’s “digitally-altered” age progressed photo of OBL which was achieved using “cutting-edge” technology; Right: the campaign photo for the leader of Spain’s United Left coalition, Gaspar Llamazares

I tweeted about this news story on Mashable a couple of days ago. I was so happy someone finally found the original “base face” source for the FBI’s age progressed photo of Osama Bin Laden, because when I first saw the FBI’s photo I thought “Why did they give Osama George Bush’s hair?”

I don’t know what kind of “cutting-edge” technology the FBI thinks it has, but the results are equivalent to nothing more than rudimentary Photoshop skills and a Google images search. How much did our tax dollars pay for that?

And I think someone owes Gaspar Llamazares a sincere apology. I’m looking at you, Johnny Utah.

Also, I suppose I should apologize to Gaspar Llamazares for thinking he has George Bush hair. Sorry about that, sir!

Related articles…

FBI angers politician whose image was used to show older Bin Laden [CNN]

The FBI Sucks at Photoshop [Mashable]

FBI’s forensic artists create debacle [The Windsor Star]

Spain wants US to publicise bin Laden photo ‘mistake’ [Middle East Online]

Identity theft [The Sydney Morning Herald]

An image of Demi Moore with a noticeably trimmed left hip ran on the December cover of W Magazine. I never blogged about it as I didn’t think it worthy of an entire blog post. I figured yeah, her hip probably had been whittled away a bit, but with not much to compare it to, why bother? However, other blogs ran with it and a few even came out and said that Demi’s head had been placed on the body of another model. (Something I totally did NOT believe, and the visual evidence those blogs presented I thought was weak at best.) The whole story even prompted professional fashion photographer Anthony Citrano to comment on the situation and then be promptly slapped with a letter from Demi’s lawyer for expressing his professional “that photo looks shopped” opinion. (Boing Boing received a letter as well.)

All of this scuttlebutt even prompted Demi to feel as if she had to defend herself and she tweeted the “original photo” via her Twitter account. (Demi should not have to defend herself to ANYONE – all she did was pose for the photo, she was not the one responsible for airbrushing it. On the other hand, the folks over at W Magazine should be explaining why they took a woman with curvy, sexy hips and digitally chiseled one of them off.)

Well, now everyone should stop sending out threatening legal letters protesting the photo was digitally altered  because there is proof they did just that. W Magazine in Korea used the same image of Demi on their New Year issue and did not retouch the hip at all. You can see the difference in the animation below…

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And with that, he case of Hipgate has been closed.