Why the camera always lies - if you are Beyonce

Flawless? As she celebrated her 33rd birthday on a yacht in the South of France this week, Beyoncé certainly looked it, at least.

Putting the ‘me’ back into social media, the singer posed in an animal-print bikini on Instagram.

Queen Bey also left her 17 million followers

second-guessing all those rumours of marital strife as she frolicked on a  beach alongside husband Jay Z and baby daughter Blue Ivy; while her washboard stomach appeared to put paid to gossip about a second pregnancy.

Far from portraying an image of twhe perfect family, however, now the star has found herself at the centre of another storm, after being accused of digitally manipulating the images.

One snap in particular caused controversy. It shows the shapely celeb striding down stairs with a visible ‘thigh gap’ — which mysteriously doesn’t appear in her shadow.

Taking to Twitter over the apparent Photoshop fail, one fan opined: “Hate that

@beyonce has been tweaked in photoshop to get a ‘thigh gap’... no wonder girls have body issues.”

“Beyoncé needs to

(a) learn how to use Photoshop properly, (b) hire someone to Photoshop her pics for her or, (c) stop using Photoshop,” said another.

When the singer first launched a Tumblr account two years ago, her fans were thrilled at the prospect of catching a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life of the pop queen.

Initially, they were rewarded with rare shots of a make-up free Beyoncé playing with Blue Ivy at home, or sharing an intimate moment with Jay Z far from the red carpet.

Slowly though, even these family snaps became as perfectly polished as her

on-stage persona.

But this week is not the first time one of GQ’s Hottest Woman of the 21st Century has been accused of being a Beautiful Liar when it comes to her online presence.

Just last month, another of her ‘off-duty’ snaps showed a distorted wine glass and mobile phone — tell-tale signs that the image had been subject to a little digital nip/tuck. Back in April, she posted two similar photos of her playing golf during a family holiday, showing off suspiciously smaller thighs in the second.

Of course, Beyoncé is not the only celebrity who’s been caught in a web of deceit.

Model Miranda Kerr was the envy of women around the world when she flaunted her waspish waist at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show on Instagram last year.

But the yummy-mummy-of-one was forced to explain herself to fans when the original image — portraying a marginally more girthsome model — surfaced online.

“When I re-posted the photo this week to support the girls I screen-grabbed it off the internet when I was working in Japan,” she tweeted.

“I had no idea it was photoshopped. All good intentions — sorry for the confusion.”

That doesn’t explain the discrepancy between photos of the 31-year-old in a cut-away dress that later appeared on her Instagram account, and the ones that appeared in other media.

Reality star Kim Kardashian, singer Britney Spears and US actress Aubrey O’Day, on the other hand, have yet to come up with excuses for allegedly going ‘under the mouse’ on Instagram.

“In an age of Insta-envy and #nofilter, even the biggest stars can feel the pressure to maintain their mask of perfection online,” says psychologist and psychotherapist Sharron Grainger of Counsellor.ie.

“As such, even their ‘off duty’ Instagram snaps are often as carefully constructed as their stage image. My advice to fans is to treat such images with a pinch of salt.

“As these Photoshop fails show, no one is perfect — not even Beyoncé.”