Apparently BP can no longer afford to employ people with even remotely reasonable Photoshop skills. As I'm sure you've heard by now, the company has admitted to (poorly) altering photos of its clean up operations in the Gulf of Mexico that were released to the public.

BP claims these truly pathetic Photoshop jobs are the work of a contract photographer. It's hard to know what to believe about this, but if there really is a photographer who took it upon himself to mess with these images, then this individual should be ashamed. We just can't decide which is more shameful, the complete lack of ethics or the complete lack of Photoshop skill.

So let's lend poor, embattled BP a hand and show them what people who actually know how to use Photoshop can do. Choose any of the three original photos from BP's Flickr album of altered images, and have at it. Our favorite is the cockpit photo that was altered to look like the helicopter is in the air (above). But almost as charming is the first altered photo discovered of BP's crisis command center (below). Gizmodo and Americablog do a great job of tearing down these photos and showing just how bad the Photoshopping is.

We'll choose some of your best, most interesting, funniest and most skilled images you send us and post them early next week. Feel free to take as much creative liberty with the images as you like (as long as the end product isn't obscene).

Submit your photos and vote for your favorites at the bottom of this post.

Original BP photos

Images: 1) Original (left) and altered (right) versions of a BP photo./© BP p.l.c. 2) Original (left) and altered (right) versions of a BP photo./© BP p.l.c.

competition closed