Adobe Photoshop, the famous image editor gave rise to the term “photoshopping” which refers to an image that has been altered by an editor, that could be necessarily not the actual Photoshop. The act of photoshopping is greatly used by magazines to alter models’ flaws and also to add or remove certain objects from a picture.
The office of 10 Downing Street, the renowned residence for the Prime Minister of the UK posted a picture on their Facebook page where the current Prime Minster, David Cameron was portrayed as wearing the sentimental Remembrance Poppy. The blunder was highlighted on this tweet.
https://twitter.com/dylanhm/status/661228417803755520
The poppy boutonnière clearly looks photoshopped, the poppy overlay is quite pixelated when you compare with another instance of when he actually wore.
The picture in question was apparently posted in July which put the nail on the coffin on the appropriately named “Poppy gate” and was uploaded by this Twitter user.
https://twitter.com/dylanhm/status/661229089978769408
As usual, Twitter users in the UK got a wind of it and started making fun of the faux pas and started posting pictures like this:
https://twitter.com/01101001/status/661239502569136128
https://twitter.com/stevahen/status/661241177199542272
I see NO evidence that David Cameron’s poppy pic was Photoshopped. People need to stop jumping to conclusions. pic.twitter.com/xISpGwESD1
— Tom Phillips (@flashboy) November 2, 2015
On Facebook where the picture was actually posted, it generated quite a bit of backlash although as of now the post has been since been deleted. The social media team noticed their mistake and quickly posted another image of David Cameron with the ornament.
https://www.facebook.com/10downingstreet/photos/a.481952568452.285540.7303343452/10153768712843453/?type=3
The interesting thing is that David Cameron has worn the poppy boutonnière before in yesteryear and it was a bit surprising that his office decided to ignore all of them and decide to go ahead use Photoshop instead. It seems like they learned their lesson and if they make another gaffe like this, this will be revisited because the internet never forgets!