16 Famous Photoshopped Images Throughout History

Hungarian tourist, Péter Guzli, September 2001

Perhaps the creepiest Photoshop fake was this shot of Hungarian tourist, Péter Guzli, apparently standing on top of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 as one of the hijacked planes approaches.

This image did the rounds after the attacks with the claim that it was found in a camera pulled out of the rubble. In fact, Guzli had taken the picture in 1997 and made the edit for friends. Other people then made further edits placing him at every disaster from the sinking of the Titanic to the destruction of the White House by aliens on Independence Day.

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British soldier in Basra, April 2003

This digital composite of a British soldier in Basra, gesturing to Iraqi civilians urging them to seek cover, appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times shortly after the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Brian Walski, a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times and a 30-year veteran of the news business, was fired after his editors discovered that he had combined two of his photographs to “improve” the composition.

George W. Bush, March 2004

This political ad for George W. Bush, as he was running for President, shows a sea of soldiers as a back drop to a child holding a flag. This image was digitally doctored by copying and pasting, from this original photograph, several soldiers to digitally remove Bush from a podium. After acknowledging that the photo had been doctored, the Bush campaign said that the ad would be re-edited and re-shipped to TV stations.

Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid, August 2006

This photograph by Adnan Hajj, a Lebanese photographer, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid. The Reuters news agency initially published this photograph on their web site and then withdrew it when it became evident that the original image had been manipulated to show more and darker smoke. “Hajj has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under”, said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters. “This represents a serious breach of Reuters’ standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him.” A second photograph by Hajj was also determined to have been doctored.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy, August 2007

The French Magazine Paris Match altered this photograph of French President Nicolas Sarkozy by removing some body fat. The magazine said it had tried adjusting the lighting on the picture. “The correction was exaggerated during the printing process,” the magazine said.

(Failed) Iranian missile test, July 2008

This image of an Iranian missile test appeared on the front page of many major newspapers. The image is from the web site of Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. After the publication of this photo, it was revealed that the second missile from the right was digitally added to the image in order to conceal a missile on the ground that did not fire.

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