But Photoshop has not only made it easier for artists to create and enhance  great works. The fact that "to photoshop" is now a verb well accepted to mean "to alter visually in a misleading way" gives you some hint as to the cultural significance of Adobe's software.

 

Sure there's been a lot of tasteful and not-so-tasteful airbrushing, saturating, cropping, stretching, face-cleaning and waist-cinching, but more broadly there's been missile-multiplying, impossible supermoons and trains where there just should not be trains.

Internet trolls and, on occasion, foreign governments have been relentless in their use of Photoshop to skew or invent the news.

Here's a look back at just five of the images that made their way into news reports but turned out to have been born of Adobe's ubiquitous software.

Hedge clipping

Here's an example of a Photoshop job that would never have made it into the news if it wasn't so poorly executed. Time magazine published this picture from official Chinese media — supposedly of officials inspecting a completed landscaping project — no attempt whatsoever was made to adjust the elements for scale.

An eye for irony

This image of a surveillance camera at George Orwell's house caused some tut-tutting and many a "goes to show ya" when it went viral, but it's a little too perfect. It is actually part of a series of photoshopped artworks by Steve Ullathorne.

The fighting F-313

When Iran unveiled a super-advanced fighter jet that could hit any target without you knowing it was there, aviation expertsdeclared there was no way it could fly. An Iranian state news agency attempted to prove them wrong with a laughable photoshop that mixed a photo previously released with a generic picture of Mount Damavand.

Kim's uncle disappears

The once-powerful uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was caught up in allegations of involvement in corruption and "depraved" acts, such as womanising and drug abuse. Consequently he was not only dragged from an auditorium by police, but his image was completely removed from official photographs and video.

George W. gets a primer in photoshop politics

The trick to making a convincing "shop" — apart from some decent blending and cloning skills — is to create a concept that people want to believe. When an anonymous trickster changed an image of George W. Bush reading America: A Patriotic Primer to make it appear as though he was holding it upside down, some were all too willing to believe it.

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