On February 1, 2005 the media reported that a hostage had been taken in Iraq. Broadcasts showed a photo (top) of a U.S. soldier sitting on the ground with a rifle pointed at his head. The photo came from an internet bulletin board frequently used by Iraqi rebels, where it was accompanied by this statement:


The Mujahideen Squadron had kidnapped a Brazilian engineer the previous month, so although the U.S. military denied any soldier was missing, the threat seemed credible. However, many bloggers questioned the photo, pointing out that the soldier was strangely expressionless for someone with a rifle pointed at his head and his arms twisted behind his back. The gun also looked fake.

Within hours American toy manufacturer Dragon Models USA Inc. issued a statement noting that "John Adam" closely resembled its Cody action-figure doll (middle). A side-by-side comparison revealed the two to be one and the same.

A week later on a Jihadist message board, an anonymous "20-year-old Iraqi young man... unarmed [and] independent" took responsibility for the hoax, insisting it was just "a scheme that I made up with a toy that I bought with $5." Accompanying his confession, a photo (bottom) showed the hostage scene from a different angle, the tiny rifle held between someone's fingers.

Martha Stewart was shown stepping out from behind parted curtains, as if walking out onto a stage. This Newsweek cover ran when Stewart was due to leave a federal prison in West Virginia. The headline read, “"Martha’s Last Laugh: After Prison She’s Thinner, Wealthier & Ready for Prime Time.” However, Stewart had not actually posed for the photo. The Newsweek editors had attached her head to the body of a model. The magazine was criticized because there was no indication on the cover that the image was a composite. Readers would only have known this if they noticed the photo credit inside the magazine, on page three, that read: “Cover: Photo illustration by Michael Elins ... head shot by Marc Bryan-Brown.”

As an April Fool's Day joke, the editors of Popular Photography ran an article about how Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" photo (bottom) could be saved.

Lange took the photo during the Great Depression. The mother in the scene is considered an iconic symbol of endurance and strength. But the editors of Popular Photography erased her wrinkles, softened her gaze, and removed her kids, transforming her into a smooth-faced soccer mom (top).

Their readers, not realizing the article was a spoof, were horrified. Hundreds wrote in to express outrage at the defacement of such a classic image.

This image, appearing to show President Bush sitting in the Oval Office struggling to solve a Rubik's Cube, has been circulating online with the caption, "I can promise, this will never get done." People often speculate that it's "photoshopped." But this is not true. Digital fakery was not used to create it. However, nor is that President Bush in the photo. It's a lookalike. The image is the work of artist Alison Jackson -- one of an ongoing series of photos staged, using lookalikes, to portray "celebrities ostensibly caught unawares" (as an exhibit of her work explains). In other photos she has depicted Paris Hilton receiving a pedicure while in prison, Prince William trying on a crown while naked, and Mick Jagger hanging out underwear.

The official Christmas holiday photograph of the Spanish royal family, published on its website, showed King Juan Carlos and his wife Queen Sofia sitting on a red sofa surrounded by their seven grandchildren. A spokesman for the royal family later admitted the photo was fake. It had not been possible to gather the grandchildren together for a photo shoot. Therefore, the family members were digitally assembled in a composite photo. "It is not a photograph of an official event - it is merely a compilation used as a Christmas greeting," a royal household spokesman said. Critics noted that in the photo the King appeared to have no legs.

Photographer Liu Weiqing claimed he had to wait with his camera in a pit for eight days to capture this image of antelope galloping across the Tibetan landscape as a high-speed train passes overhead on the newly opened Qinghai-Tibet railway. "I wanted to capture the harmony among the Tibetan antelope, the train, men and nature," he said.

The photo, widely disseminated by Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, eased concerns that the high-speed train (which started service in July 2006) would disturb Tibetan wildlife. CCTV, China's state-run television network, declared it a top 10 "photo of the year" in late 2006.

The problems began in 2008 when the photograph was displayed in Beijing's subway system. An amateur photographer, who posted online under the screen name Dajiala, noticed a line near the bottom of the railway bridge where two images appeared to have been spliced together.

Once he voiced his suspicions, others soon chimed in. Animal behaviorists noted it would have been very unlikely that the noise-sensitive antelope would have been galloping in a tight pack. The sound of the train would have caused them to scatter in panic.

Liu eventually confessed he had composited several different images together. He resigned from the Daqing Evening News, where he was employed, as did his editor. CCTV revoked his award.

Reuters distributed the top image, showing smoke rising over Beirut after an Israeli air strike, on August 5, 2006. It had been taken by Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj, who had been freelancing for Reuters for ten years.

The conservative "Little Green Footballs" website soon identified the photo as a fake, noting that, based on the unusual repetitive patterns in the smoke, it appeared Hajj must have used Photoshop's cloning tool to add additional smoke to the sky. When questioned by Reuters, Hajj admitted the photo was altered, but claimed he had simply tried to remove some dust marks from it. Reuters withdrew the image and replaced it with the original (middle).

Other altered photos by Hajj were subsequently found, including one of an Israeli F-16 (bottom) in which a flare has been replicated several times. Reuters informed Hajj that it would no longer use his photos, and it deleted all his images from its archive.

In September 2006 Katie Couric became the anchor of the CBS Evening News, after a long career at NBC. As CBS put it, this made her "the first female solo anchor of a weekday network evening news broadcast."

A picture of Couric (top) posing in front of a CBS logo appeared in the September issue of CBS's Watch magazine (distributed at CBS stations and on American Airlines). But sharp-eyed newshounds at mediabistro.com realized they had seen the image before. It had been taken in May 2006 during a presentation for advertisers held by CBS at Carnegie Hall. In anticipation of her move to CBS, Couric had briefly appeared on stage. The photo of her at this event was the first image showing her in front of a CBS logo. CBS had distributed it as a promotional photo.

But in the original version of the photo (bottom) distributed in May, Couric was noticeably heavier. Watch magazine had evidently digitally slimmed her down.

The alteration generated controversy, since, as many asked, would a new male anchor have been similarly slimmed down? CBS attributed the alteration to someone in the photo department who "got a little zealous." Couric dismissed her digital weight loss as a trivial event. She said, "I liked the first picture better because there's more of me to love."