44 famous Photoshopped and doctored images from across the ages

Photoshop is the modern go-to tool for editing and altering images, but changing photographs to put a different spin on them is far from a new trend.

We've tracked down some of the best from over the years, including recent examples that did indeed use Adobe's software, to show just how popular and crazy this trend has been.

Removed Russian Cosmonaut

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In the early 1960s Russian cosmonauts were the first to carry out an orbit of our home planet.

Later one of those cosmonauts (Grigoriy Nelyubov) was removed from this photo after being ditched from the Soviet space program for drunk and disorderly conduct.

Leon Trotsky

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Leon Trotsky was a Ukrainian-Russian who was known for creating a variation of Marxism known as Trotskyism.

In this photo manipulation though, he is seen with Vladimir Lenin. Later when the two quarrelled he was removed from the photo. Lenin referred to Trotsky as "Little Judas" as well as "scoundrel" and "swine" so it's no surprise he was doctored out of the photos together.

Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov

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During his reign as leader of the Soviet Union from the 1920s until his death in 1953, Stalin was famous for many things, including the notorious doctoring of images to remove people who had fallen out of his favour.

One such person was Nikolai Yezhov who was removed from this photo taken at Moscow Canal.

Stalin and censorship

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So rife was this trend that there's even a Wikipedia page dedicated to it. In this photo, Commissar Nikolai Yezhov is removed by censors after he fell out with Stalin, was arrested in 1939 and was later executed.

Another classic example shows a photograph changing multiple times as the people in it fell out of good graces with the Stalin regime.

Hitler and Goebbels

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Stalin wasn't the only famous dictator prone to removing friends from his photos. There are several instances of Adolf Hitler having people censored from official snaps too.

Here Joseph Goebbels is shed from this otherwise friendly scene of Hitler and friends.

Flag over the Reichstag

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Another famous photo has one of the smallest alterations we've seen. Here, Soviet soldiers are pictured raising their flag over the Reichstag at the end of World War Two. If you look closely you'll see the original photograph shows the soldier below wearing what looks like a watch on each wrist.

Flag over the Reichstag Original

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The photo was later edited for fear that it might imply that the soldiers had been looting. There was however conjecture that one of the wrists was merely a tactical compass.

Churchill's trademark cigar

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Many of the iconic photos of Winston Churchill feature the trademark cigar, but this one was digitally altered to remove the cigar when it was featured at The Britain At War Experience museum in London.

Why it was removed though, nobody knows, not even the museum manager.

Fidel Castro and Carlos Franqui

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Another classic case of old friends and comrades falling out of favour, this photo of Fidel Castro taken in 1968 shows him approving the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia.

The original image included Carlos Franqui who had abandoned the regime and gone into exile in Italy.