30 Horrific Commercial Photoshop Disasters
Here’s a collection of horrific commercial Photoshop disasters made by professional graphic designers, who have made a poor job of not paying attention to detail when it comes to retouching photos.
What’s the best way to become a better designer ? learning from your mistakes and other people mistakes. Being careless and not paying attention to detail can have a big impact on your work as designer and can potential ruin your relationships with clients and also potential clients who are considering hiring you for a project.
Feel free to leave a comment to share your personal favourite Photoshop disasters and other Photoshop disasters which are not within the list.
Check out more disasters over at Photoshop Disasters.
Check Out our new site Design Chair:
1. Garnier: On The Shoulders Of Midgets
2. Torchwood: Retractable Thumbs
3. Pepsi: Challenged
4. Lexar: 8GB 
5. Azoogle: This Was Really Well Thought Out In Every Way
6. Braking The Cycle: We Broke The Cycle
7. computerdesks.com: Wat! 
8. Unwigged & Unplugged: Cannot Undo 
10. StarGate: Dodgy Vertical Hold
11. Ladyhands
12. America Team
14. Basic Head Swap
16. Red Bull: Gives You Nightmares 
18. INFDaily: Photo Editor’s Pants On Fire
19. Playboy: Clone Tool Beats Belly Button 
20.Fanta: You Really Don’t Wanta
21.Tuttosport: Insert Severed Hand Joke Here 
22.Cheese Heads: Finger Deforming Good!
23.Curves
25.Highland
26.Diario Sportivo AS: I Wasn’t Expecting The Spanish Inquisition
27.Towson: The Haunted College
28.Rigged Outfitters: Unbelievable Printing
29.London Lite: Ain’t Gonna Go To Retouch
30.Kids Toys
Thanks To Photoshop Disasters
A special thanks to Photoshop Disasters who provide the use of these images for our post.
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Tags: commercial, disaters, Inspiration, photoshop
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September 3rd, 2009 at 3:22 am
“…who have made a poor job of not paying attention to detail when it comes to retouching photo’s.”
No apostrophe in “photos”, dear. Details, irony, etc.
Love the post, though!
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 am
Some of those are really quite amusing.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:15 am
@Tracy – We where just testing you Tracey lol, i’m glad you enjoyed the post thanks for the comment.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:03 am
Funny post, thanks! 5, 23, 26… hahaha
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
@Pat – haha.. ye their pretty cool have you checked out 27 that’s one of my favourites.
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
just to mention that the redbull thing was on purpose, if i remember well… they were sponsoring a movie night and communicated with something about super happy people…
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
didn’t get the pepsi thingy..funny post!
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Hahahahaaaa… What are they thinking. Some of these are supposed to have passed the scrutiny of many heads. Not one noticed it before letting it out… That’s what impresses me most with these kind of PS disasters!
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
@Wallace Rodrigues -haha your 100% Wright I couldn’t of said it better myself.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Excellent collection. Many of them really funny. I have that very same poster in full size (#25. Highland) and can you believe, I had never noticed that mistake. Shame on me!
Brilliant post. Thanks for sharing
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Very funny.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Nice. Check out the guy’s shadow in pic #5 too. It wasn’t circled, but jacked up. Craziness.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
@BebopDesigner Ye same with me i had poster free with games magzine of #24 i can’t believe i never spotted the mistake. thanks for comment glad you enjoyed the post.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
@Andy M – Very observant i never spotted that one thanks for sharing mate
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Seriously, does anybody not think the one with the Spinal Tap guys was not an intentional joke?
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Number 5 also has a big mistake with the shadow. Dude with outstretched hands holding nothing…
Nice collection though, I love these kind of photoshop mistakes.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
forgot to circle something in the image with the guy holding a check.
…apparently checks don’t cast shadows…
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:08 pm
very much creative stuff you sharing. thanks
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:27 pm
omfg i lol’ed a loooootttttt
Very nice post!
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Haha fail
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Not to mention they’ve taped the wrong hand to Beyonce’s shoulder! Nice one.
September 4th, 2009 at 12:33 am
Some of these are just painful to look at. The ‘Azoozle’ one nearly made me cry.
On another note, great compilation of Photoshop fail! It gave me a much-needed laugh, not to mention the reassurance that no matter what happens, I will NEVER fail as hard in Photoshop as some of these people have…
September 4th, 2009 at 6:26 am
Failblog had #5 image alone and the they caught the shadow too. Pretty funny! I DO have to wonder though- that woman in #19 was so ridiculously skinny to begin with- why was her belly button missing? What needed to be airbrush lipo’d from that underweight figure? Yeesh.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:37 am
ha ha…I’ve got stomach cramps…the vampire check was the best…
September 4th, 2009 at 6:56 am
About the “Breaking the cycle” one.. It might be a poorly done photoshop, but the basic idea is that the bicycle tire is behind the flowers. Visually it’s correct, but artistically it needs more work.
September 4th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Having trouble seeing the problem with #3. The reflection is perfectly backwards, as it should be. As for #4, the only problem I see is that the reflection has a 4 instead of an 8.
September 4th, 2009 at 7:14 am
Yes I did lol…..
Thanks for the post
September 4th, 2009 at 7:41 am
I don’t see the error in #3 with Pepsi…. Am I just completely missing something?
September 4th, 2009 at 7:45 am
#7 I don’t think this was a mistake. More likely it was a designer having a bit of fun with his client. Although this sort of thing can backfire worse than stupid mistakes.
#8 As mentioned above and in your original post, this was an intentional joke. Including it in this list of “disasters” makes you look a little foolish.
#10 Not sure what’s wrong with her head, but the three actors on the right have creepy doppelgangers behind them!
#12 The guy standing on the box in the back, his feet don’t seem to line up with his upper body too well.
#15 Why is her right hand circled?
#16 Disturbing? Yes. But obviously intentional. As with #8, I don’t think this qualifies as a disaster.
# 27 Might this not be in camera and therefore not a photoshop? And it looks like YOU had to play with the levels a little to even get that woman’s face to show up. Shame, shame!
#30 Granted, this looks a little silly to us adults, but it’s a child’s toy ad and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Obviously kids can’t shrink down to the size of their toys to begin with. It’s fantastical and meant to appeal to a child’s imagination. Again, the effect is intentional and not a mistake and therefore does not really qualify as a disaster.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:07 am
I think some of these would happen under stress and tight deadline. However, like some, I don’t get the Pepsi.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:50 am
#5 doesn’t have the board’s shadow either. haha.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:56 am
With no.3 The problem is with the shadows as they don’t meet with the objects in an earthly way. Specially the sides of the cans, they should meet with their shadows, but there is a gap.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Re: #3 Pepsi
The reflections of the Pepsi, Pepsi Max and Sierra Mist would not overlap that way (the reflection of the Pepsi can appears translucent when it really should have blocked the reflections of the other cans behind them).
September 4th, 2009 at 9:17 am
I dont get the pepsi one…it looks right to me
September 4th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Pepsi cans: The reflections underneath overlap eachother.
I got all of them, except the first one with the cherries.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Yep, the Redbull thing is intentional. They indeed sponsored the movie fanatics night, and it was part of the campaign.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:41 am
#24 is simply the perspective, her thumb is behind the other fingers, that is how you would hold a lollipop. I think some of these examples are simply perspective problems. However, the disappearing belly-buttons and the ghost hands are simply unforgivable! How could someone overlook that!
September 4th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
@ROB # 27
It shows a white girl was using the computer and the shop’ed in a black girl
September 4th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Some pics are looking so fake if its not fake
what are they doing very pooooooooor work
or maybe selector is blind he he he he
September 4th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
@ Rob
Think the point about #30 was the fact that the child is cut off from the belly button down!!
@Scott
#24 isn’t simply perspective, if you count fropm the bottom up you can see four fingers, then her index finger appears and the thumb is obviously out of sight.
For me the best, or rather worst photoshop job I have ever seen is the posted for Tombstone, whoever is responsible should be shot. It looks bad, but if you’ve seen the film it’s ten times worse as you know how it should look!!
September 4th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
@ Rob T. Firefly Umm.. NO. The girl in the reflection is somewhere behind the girl on the computer out of frame. I realized what the problem was. The name of the school on the woman’s shirt should be reversed if it was a reflection. All this means is that the photograph was flipped (a regular practice in advertising) in order to make the photograph flow better with the rest of the website. And I still argue that no one would have noticed this had someone with too much time on their hands gone in and adjusted the levels in order to make the person in the reflection visible. If you look at the original the reflection is nearly black. Also, look at how much brighter the grass is much brighter in the zoomed in shot than the original. Really, this is some of the worst nitpicking I have ever seen.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
@ Dougbowski
His lower half is cut off because it’s supposed to look like he’s sitting in the bucket. I know there really isn’t enough room for him the rest of him in that bucket; but again, I don’t think it was a mistake and the ad shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
on #27, how come the Towson logo in the reflection is not reversed?
September 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I really like #7 (little boy educating another boy in the female physique) and #15 (3 hands would come in rather “handy”).
September 4th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Beutiful collection
September 4th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I take issue with number 13. Keanu is just practicing good gun safety. You don’t walk around with your finger on the trigger because you might twitch and set it off.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Scratch that. I didn’t notice that the gun had a muzzle flash. Although probably the addition of the flash is the part that screwed it up.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Many of these “horrific” mistakes are so inconsequential that the only way they would get me fired is if I wasted valuable time correcting them.
September 4th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Check the current Orangina ad campaign on the underground in London. The dancing guy in the suit.. can you spot it?
September 4th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Tracy, why not try going outside for once instead of spending your life being the fucking grammar police on the internet?
September 4th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
My favorite one is the girl with the gigantic smile http://creativenerds.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/photoshopdisatersmileyface.jpg The next one is the soccer game with the repeating fan standing.
Love them all! Where can I get a job doing this stuff?? I could sure use the money and promise I won’t make any of the mistakes.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
I just saw this on DIGG, great stuff! Thanks for posting this info, Tim.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
this stuff makes me laugh then cry then laugh again. good stuff.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I don’t get the first one either? The cherries look like cherries to me, and I cannot find any midgets in the photo…
Please explain.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Can someone explain the problem with the cherries to me? Are they just abnormally large?
September 4th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
The trouble with #3 (Pepsi) is that the 3D of the reflected can is wrong. The reflection should look as though each can is stacked on top of its reflection, with the curve of the bottom of the can matching the curve of the top of the reflected can.
On the #1 (cherries), the issue isn’t the cherries at all; it’s how unnaturally close the woman’s arms are together. (The circling of the cherries makes that confusing.)
September 4th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
as someone who works with photoshop at a semi-professional level (?) I can understand how these mistakes happen. You are working with many layers and an important detail (like a bellybutton, hand, exc.) might be on its own layer and you accidentally move, hide or delete the layer and then save the file and don’t double check.
Very, very funny though
September 4th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I don’t get the first one or the pepsi one
September 4th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
#27 is not a reflection of the computer user, the computer user is watching a video about Towson that has a girl in it wearing a Towson shirt. If that were an actual reflection, because of the the angle of the view, the screen wouldn’t reflect back to the person directly infront of the computer anyway. it would be someone off to the side. This one is completely not messed up.
To the defender of the lollypop…yes the thumb is underneath….underneath 5 fingers.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:44 am
For #23, couldn’t it just be that the lady was wearing a t-shirt under her sweater rather than a photo-shop error? It seems unlikely that they would erase a belly-button and switch out the actress.
September 5th, 2009 at 8:53 am
nice post
September 5th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I don’t think some of these are all that bad. I do some Photoshop work and I’m always struggling to “not” make things perfect. I strive to get things good enough and leave it at that. It’s a balancing act between what is acceptable and what isn’t. A few above I think aren’t acceptable, but some are fine. I don’t think the person doing them didn’t realize they weren’t perfect, instead they just thought it was good enough and in a few of the cases above I agree.
September 5th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Ummm….the Spinal Tap “Unwigged” poster was a joke by the way, Harry Shearer’s idea.
September 5th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
The photo number 5, where is the shade of the check?????
September 5th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Very funny and diverting. Who cares whether any of these was intended by the PSers? Thanks Creative Nerds!
September 7th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I bet in most cases, the designer didn’t even care really. Great post made me laugh
September 7th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
I work with Photoshop too.
The worst mistake I ever made was for a web ad for a German crime movie.
In German, you say “Hände hoch oder ich schieße”, that could be freely translated as “Put your hands up in the air or I’ll shoot”.
Well, the German verb “schießen” = “to shoot” is kinda similar to “scheißen” = “to shit”. Well, you can guess what happend. Next day, in big fat letters on about 100+ webpages it said, “…or I’ll shit”.
The ad was removed within 2 hours, and the movie people never had me do a job.
I myself don’t know how I could overlook such a big mistake… XD
September 8th, 2009 at 10:59 am
very funny, thanks
September 9th, 2009 at 4:32 am
Really interesting collection of photoshop disasters.
In Jeremy Shoemaker of Azoogle ads, you can check out his shadow as well.
lol
September 9th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Some of those are hilarious and so ameteur – it makes you wonder how on earth some people are able to get stuff like this through any sort of quality control. Great post!
September 10th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I want to say that I”m shocked and awed by these errors, but honestly I”m not surprised by these types of oversights. Its end results of what happens when the design community is devalued by things like spec work, marketing supervisors managing designers without a senior level designer as a buffer, and of course sacrificing quality to get things done NOW.
People need to really go back to the standards and professionalism that shows that you value your brand.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Love the missing belly buttons!
September 13th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
lol, wow… don’t these newspapers have editors.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Good for a hearty laugh!
September 14th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Just commenting to say thanks for the laugh.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Lol – wow. I had to cover my mouth to hold the laugh in. These are quite disastrous!
September 21st, 2009 at 9:25 am
hahaha! funstuff!
September 21st, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Haha some major brands doing some schoolboy errors right there!
September 29th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Lol… this is quite funny…
September 30th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Am I the only one who first thought the image in related articles, about “ABSTACT” brushes, was part of the set?
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Regarding the first comment about “photo’s” being wrong, and it should have been “photos”…
On first glance I’d agree, but if you think about it, photo is short for photograph, so that might be why the put an apostrophe in, to signify that some letters were missing, like you do with “can’t” for “can not”.
That said, I agree, it looks retarded!
October 4th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Do a Google image search for the words “curves cereal” and you’ll see why the black girl isn’t photoshopped. She’s just wearing a t-shirt under.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Great post I know the feeling when you just want to get the editing done and get a bit careless but have never airbrushed a belly button out! You’d think the clients would pick up on some of them.
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I am not a designer and only found these because I am looking at getting a new logo done. Some of them I had to look at for a while (so I guess most non-skilled people like me would not have noticed), but once you see them they really stand out!
December 18th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Agreed with the person who said “photo’s” is correct. Photo’s is a contraction of “photographs”, so the apostrophe signifies missing letters.
As you ought to say ‘phone instead of telephone.
February 12th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
“…who have made a poor job of not paying attention to detail when it comes to retouching photo’s.”
No apostrophe in “photos”, dear. Details, irony, etc.
Love the post, though!
The word Photo’s surely can be used. The apostrophe is to show omission, in this case graph…..what do you think people?
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:01 am
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April 15th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
did anyone notice that check was for five hunderd thousand and not hundred
I know it is not a photoshop error… but is is wrong
May 5th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Haha the one where the guy is holding the cheque made me laugh!
May 10th, 2010 at 8:11 am
What mistakes
May 10th, 2010 at 8:11 am
Gross errors is
May 14th, 2010 at 10:29 am
#5 shadow doesn’t contain shadow of cheque
Too bad “hundred” wasn’t spelled right either! Would you trust these people to pay you?
July 1st, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Wow … how can those errors possibly be overlooked? They are so obvious, except if the designers went blind by the end. Great post
Thanks for sharing it.
July 9th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
lol!
July 10th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
10. There are some people behind the guys on the right….
August 6th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
LOL, awesome selection…
August 20th, 2010 at 12:42 am
You really have to wonder how they end up with extra arms and hands on people….
August 31st, 2010 at 3:11 pm
I knew it! Schoemaker lies about all his revenue, you just give me the proof
September 3rd, 2010 at 8:48 pm
the one of the as was made because on the original photo was an advertisement of another sports newspaper from spain. but… it was better to erase the ad than make what they made =D
October 12th, 2010 at 2:49 am
Oh dear, very amusing.
October 22nd, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Haha ! was nearly falling of my chair here well done!
October 25th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
I think #30 is intentional…like the kid can pretend he is a firefighter on top of the ladder.
February 24th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
#13 is not a photoshop mistake. It is physically possible (and highly reccomended) to hold a weapon and not put your finger on the trigger…until you are ready to kill.
March 29th, 2011 at 4:48 am
OMG, this post make me laugh. Btw thanks for post
April 11th, 2011 at 10:01 am
Very funny PS works
April 13th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
Haha brilliant, some great spots here well in fact some obvious ones it seems.
May 2nd, 2011 at 4:42 am
These are one of the best photo shop disasters pics! Awesome!
May 6th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Some are hilarious LOLZ
May 23rd, 2011 at 2:02 pm
How on earth did some of those get the editors approval? There are a few which are subtle and no doubt easy to miss at a glance… but seriously, someone should have seen extra fingers or a whole ‘severed hand’!
July 25th, 2011 at 5:29 am
So funny, LOLzzzz
July 26th, 2011 at 7:48 am
Did anyone else notice in #5 that the shadow of the guy is different? There is no cheque in the shadow… lol
September 5th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
“? learning from your mistakes and other people mistakes.” Indeed. Should be a capital L on ‘learning’ as it starts a new sentence. Also you can’t learn from other people mistakes. Surely other people’s mistakes? Slight case of hypocritical irony there…
October 28th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say wonderful blog!
November 24th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Very Horrific thebigoctober.tumblr.com
January 29th, 2012 at 11:09 pm
These are great. Several years ago I took a phone picture of a Victoria Secret cover (ahem, I am a mailman), that just looked funny. I don’t pay much attention to them, really I don’t. But this one made me keep trying to figure… FINALLY I saw it…the poor gal had been photoshopped so much, her belly button was clear up her right side, several inches to the right and higher than it should have been! I hope I can find that picture! If you save your old ones
you might have it yet!
March 8th, 2012 at 5:12 am
The advertising agencies earns more than any photoshop master. It´s a shame.
April 10th, 2012 at 4:27 pm
what is wrong with number 3