The dramatic altercation of images in Photoshop has gotten people in trouble in the past. But Microsoft has crossed a line. The company was caught today, running  an ad in which the race of one model had been changed in photoshop.

The ad in question ran  on a Polish site. It originally was published on Microsoft's U.S. site with three people around a boardroom table, one white, one Asian and one black. Before publishing the ad on the Polish site, however, Microsoft replaced the black man with a white man.

Microsoft was quick to apologize, sending a tweet and taking down the ad. But does a quick reaction mean the greater internet community will forget about this transgression?

Perhaps the worst part about this incident is that it is not the first time a company has been caught altering race in promotional material. The image above shows how Toronto Officials tried to boost their diversity by photoshoping in an African American man to a hispanic family. Creepy... and a bad photoshop job taboot! The Telegraph actually found four other examples that include the likes of Ford and Curves.

So does this mean our society is not quite as racism free as we thought it was? Maybe. But it may also mean that companies, like Microsoft, are working with old advertising data. I would like to think that in this globalized world of ours, even the people of Poland could identify enough with a black man to buy a business product. Thanks, but no thanks on trying to sugarcoat your advertising Microsoft. But next time, you can keep your racism to your self. 

(image from The Telegraph)