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."

The sign in the window of the armed forces recruiting center (top) reads, "Suicidal Teens Welcome! Enlist Here!" The image is almost certainly fake. It would be a simple matter to paste the sign into the image, and then use Photoshop's opacity tool to blend the sign into the window, making it appear to be behind the glass.

Some have speculated that the hoaxer could have surreptitiously placed the sign in the window of the recruiting center and then quickly snapped the picture. This is possible but unlikely since it would be far easier to digitally alter the image then to stage the shot in real life.

The sign is a reference to an episode of The Simpsons (screenshot, bottom) in which a similar sign was shown in the window of an army recruiting center.

An image taken by Claro Cortes for Reuters shows a Chinese farmer tending organic tomatoes in a greenhouse near Beijing. Because of the position of the tomatoes in the foreground of the picture, they appear to be enormously large.

In October 2006 a 28-year-old Mongolian woman, Altantuya Shaariibuu, was murdered in a remote region of Malaysia. The murder attracted a great deal of attention in the media, both because of the brutal nature of the crime (after being killed, her body was blown apart with high-grade military explosives), and because Shaariibuu was connected to some prominent political figures.

Two members of the Malaysian special police force were charged with her murder, and Abdul Razak, an influential defense analyst, was charged with abetment. Shaariibuu had worked as a translator for Razak and was romantically linked to him. But during the trial, witnesses claimed that Shaariibuu had also known Najib Razak, Malaysia's deputy prime minister. Najib Razak insisted he had never met Shaariibuu, but in court Shaariibuu's cousin claimed to have seen a photo of Najib Razak, Abdul Razak, and Shaariibuu having dinner together at a restaurant in France.

A few days later (on July 2, 2007), one of Malaysia's opposition politicians, Tian Chua, posted a photo on his website that appeared to be the one described by Shaariibuu's cousin. It showed Najib Razak (center), Abdul Razak and a woman resembling Altantuya Shaariibuu sitting together at a restaurant.

Najib immediately protested that the photo was fake and accused Tian of using unethical tactics to defame him. Tian admitted the photo was fake, but argued he was merely trying to provoke Najib into being more forthcoming about his connection to the case.

In its Aug 9, 2007 issue Paris Match published a photo (top) showing French President Nicolas Sarkozy canoeing with his son on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. The photo was taken by Reuters photographer Neal Hamberg while Sarkozy was vacationing in the U.S. The photo simultaneously appeared in other publications.

Paris Match's rival, L'Express, subsequently revealed that in the original version of the photo (bottom) Sarkozy had obvious "love handles." But Paris Match had digitally removed Sarkozy's fat bulge from the version it used. No other publication that ran the image had altered it in this way.

Paris Match claimed it had altered the picture only because Sarkozy's seated position in the boat exaggerated the size of his fat bulge. However, the magazine was criticized for pandering to the President. Paris Match, it was widely noted, was owned by a friend of Sarkozy's, the businessman Arnaud Lagardère.

Sarkozy's spokesman said the President had not requested the alteration.

Zhou Zhenglong, a farmer in Shaanxi Province, China, came forward with a picture of a rare South China tiger, a creature not seen in the wild since 1964 and that many feared to be extinct. Zhou said he had taken the photo (top) on October 3, 2007 and that he had "risked his life" to do so. Forestry officials published the photo, paid him a reward of 20,000 yuan, and began an intensive search for the animal.

However, the photo quickly generated suspicion, especially online. Police were able to identify the trees in Zhou's photo, and by extrapolating from this information concluded that Zhou's tiger, if real, measured less than a foot in length. The forestry officials were criticized for promoting the dubious photo, apparently in the hope that proof of the tiger's existence would attract tourism to the region.

Eventually the police determined that Zhou had created the photo using a picture of the South China tiger he had found in an old calendar (bottom). He simply cut the picture out of the calendar, attached it to a wooden backing, placed it between the trees, and snapped its photo. He had hoped to receive a sizable reward (much larger than the one he got) for proving the existence of the tiger.

In June 2008 thirteen officials were fired for their involvement in the fraud. Zhou was arrested on suspicion of fraud.

The campaign office of congressional candidate Dean Hrbacek mailed voters a brochure showing the candidate posed in a suit. It was later discovered that the body in the photo did not belong to Hrbacek. His head had been digitally pasted onto the body of a significantly slimmer man.

Hrbacek’s campaign office defended the fake photo by claiming that Hrbacek did not have time to pose for a real picture since he had been so busy meeting voters in the 22nd Congressional District. Republican political consultant Allen Blakemore noted it was relatively rare for candidate’s to create doctored photos of themselves since “it can question the veracity of other things you are trying to get across.”

Barack Obama has admitted to being a smoker, though before he launched his presidential campaign he resolved to quit the habit. (By his own admission, he has had a few lapses.) Nevertheless, there are hardly any photos of him smoking, largely because his campaign makes great efforts to stop such photos getting out, fearing negative public reaction.

In early 2008 the top photo began circulating online, showing Obama with a cigarette in his mouth. It is not real. The original photo (bottom) was taken by Kwame Ross on Aug. 3, 2004 while then-State Sen. Obama met with constituents at the University of Illinois while campaigning to become a U.S. Senator.

An unknown hoaxer digitally added the cigarette into the photo.

According to the description that frequently accompanies these images as they circulate via email, they show the home gun collection of Charlton Heston, housed beneath his 1860s Manor House. The images began to do the rounds online soon after Heston's death in April, 2008.

Heston was well known as a gun enthusiast. He was president of the National Rifle Association for many years. However, this is not his gun collection, nor even his home. The collection actually belonged to attorney Bruce Stern, who died in 2007. The guns have since been mostly auctioned off. It was one of the largest firearms collections ever to go up for auction.