Microsoft have been found to have made one of the biggest Photoshop mistakes to date. This is a headline any company could do with out. Only time will tell how big a blunder it has turned out to be for one of the biggest companies in the world.

Internet giant, Microsoft, has come under fire for replacing a black man in an advert with a white counterpart – only forgetting to photoshop his hand.

The gaff appeared on the company’s business productivity infrastructure site. An English version of the work, as pictured right, features (from left to right) an Asian man, a black man and a white woman.

But in a reworking of the same ad for the Polish market the line up was changed to: Asian man, white man (with black hand) and white woman. Asian men are presumably not offensive to the Polish market. Black men are. Oh, and white women are OK too. The gaff was first spotted by tech blog Engadget and has since set the world’s media alight.

Microsoft has suffered a double whammy, not only coming under fire for its racist gaff, but also for its shoddy Photoshop skills. After the gaff was flagged up on a number of news sources, Microsoft took swift action.

"We are looking into the details of this situation. We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the [Polish] image,” the computer giant told CNET.

It has since been replaced by the original un-shopped image. But the PR damage has been done. Due to the power of digital communications, the crummy image is still in circulation (see below). This one looks sets to run and run.

original image:

Photoshop gaff: