The Top 10 Photoshop Blunders Of All Time

Over the past decade or two, Adobe’s Photoshop image editing software has become a staple in the world of graphics and media. The program’s primary function is to take an image and alter it in such a way that the final image is cleaner, crisper, and – for lack of a better word – better. In fact, Photoshop’s popularity and usage is so widespread that the word “photoshop” has become a colloquial verb meaning to edit and touch up an image, not unlike how the word “google” can now be used interchangeably with the term “search”.

Unfortunately, not every image that is put through Photoshop turns out well. Mistakes are made, errors are overlooked, and the final product can be catastrophically bad.  Here are some of the absolute worst Photoshop blunders of all time.

#10 – Color Confused Cereal

Let me start off by saying that I don’t have anything against breakfast cereal. In fact, a tasty bowl of healthy morning goodness is a fantastic way to start the day. But there’s something about race-changing cereal that I just can’t make myself endorse…

#9 – Missing Belly Button

Playboy ran this ad sometime in the past and instantly knocked many readers back to the genesis of humankind. Where is this woman’s belly button? One explanation is that a careless photo artist accidentally airbrushed it away. Personally, I think we’ve found Eve of Eden.

#8 – Wrong Reflection

There’s a tiny chance that this was intentional, but even then it would be terrible. Creating a text reflection is one of the most basic image editing procedures to perform. So basic, in fact, that there are websites that will automatically generate image reflections for you. There’s no excuse for this one.

#7 – Lazy Stock Image

The designer for this video game decided to save a few bucks on the cover, essentially ripping the image from iStockphoto without paying for it. Unfortunately, he was too inattentive to notice the watermarks. That, or just really ballsy.

#6 – Headless Athlete

It’s amazing how a print publication as large and prolific as Sports Illustrated managed to let a mistake like this pass under their radar. It’s hard to tell what exactly they were trying to photoshop, but they forgot to put this guy’s head back on.

#5 – Mismatched Reflection

It’s hard to put any trust into a company that fails this badly. Were they deliberately trying to fool the consumer? Or was it simply human error? Either way, Lexar comes out bottom as dishonest or incompetent.

#4 – Fake Cheque

Speaking of dishonesty, how about an image that blatantly lies to your face? This guy has two massive Photoshop mistakes in this picture. For one, the image quality of the fake cheque is abysmal – it might fool someone who is computer illiterate, but that’s about it. For another, the cheque appears to be a vampire cheque. Vampires don’t have shadows, right?

#3 – Copy & Pasted Audience

Not really sure what to say here. Did the image editor really think nobody would notice?

#2 – Really Smart Redhead

Alright, so here’s the thing: in order to achieve this effect, the image artist had to voluntarilyand consciously slice this poor woman’s forehead and manually move it up a few hundred pixels… and during that entire process, it never crossed the artist’s mind that the result of such an operation would be unnatural, to say the least. It boggles the mind.

#1 – Legless Beauty

Here we have the absolute worst Photoshop mistake of all time. Now, I am by no means a Photoshop expert, but at what point does a woman’s leg disappear? And even afterwards, how is it that nobody on staff noticed an entire thigh missing?

Have you seen any Photoshop blunders of your own? Share them in the comments!