The three photos were posted on BP's Gulf of Mexico response homepage, and later on their Facebook page.

In one, blank screens in a control room were edited to display underwater footage, and in one particularly strange example, an interior shot of a stationary helicopter was manipulated to make it appear to be in the air.

However, the contractor that did the editing forgot to remove the uppermost part of the control tower, on the ship where the helicopter was sitting.

"I think it's genuinely on the stupidity part of the transparency scale," Gibbs said at the White House daily briefing. "I mean, if you want to show a picture of what the room looks like, just take a picture."

BP blamed a hired photographer for the poor edits.