BP admits using Photoshop to exaggerate oil spill command centre activity

BP acknowledges it posted on its website an altered photo that exaggerates the activity at its Gulf oil spill command centre in Houston.

The picture posted over the weekend showed workers monitoring a bank of 10 giant video screens displaying underwater images.

The spokesman Scott Dean said yesterday that three screens were blank in the original picture and a staff photographer used Photoshop software to add images.

Dean says the company put the unaltered picture up on Monday after a blogger for the website Americablog wrote about telltale discrepancies. "Anyone who has ever used Photoshop knows that this is an incredibly amateur job. I can do far better than this, and I tend to play with Photoshop for fun," wrote John Aravsois on Americablog.

Dean says the photographer was showing off his Photoshop skills and there was no ill intent.

He said BP has ordered workers to use Photoshop only for things like color correction, cropping and removing glare.

The incident comes just as BP appeared to have reversed some of its problems, having capped the leaking well in the Gulf and seeming to have shrugged off takeover threats.