Trying to win back some credibility for corporate transparency, BP has posted a Flickr set of its doctored images.
Earlier this week BP admitted some of the oil spill photographs posted on its website had been altered by staff using Photoshop, after the website AmericaBlog highlighted discrepancies between BP images and their original.
The first altered image to surface was of a BP command centre, showing three men monitoring 10 screens of underwater activity – except in the original at least three of the screens appeared to be inactive. Enter some Photoshop wizardry.
Using Photoshop, the BP staffer made it appear as if all 10 screens were active (if only showing reformatted versions of another screen).
Now BP has taken the plunge and uploaded three doctored images and their originals to the photo-sharing site Flickr. However, America's public enemy number one falls some way short of full redemption by only posting smaller (600x400 pixel) versions of the Photoshop iterations, as opposed to the 2400x1600 originals.
A statement accompanying the set reads:
"One of BP's contract photographers used Photoshop to edit images posted on the bp.com Gulf of Mexico Response web site.
"Typical Photoshop uses include color correction, reducing glare and cropping. This week we learned of two images where cut-and-paste was also used in the photo-editing process. These cut-and-pasted images have been removed from the bp.com site.
"For the sake of transparency, the original and edited images are presented here for comparison. We have also included an image that appears cut-and-pasted, but was edited using the color saturation tool to improve the visibility of a projection screen image.
"Although BP is a private company, we've instructed the photographer who created the images to refrain from cutting-and-pasting in the future and to adhere to standard photo journalistic best practices."
A BP spokesperson, Scott Dean, said the photographer was showing off his Photoshop skills and there was no ill intent. Hmmm.
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