Photoshopping

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Photoshopped "early computing" hoax by Lukket of Fark.com; this image even fooled news publications as to its authenticity.

This elephant has been photoshopped to be pink.

"Photoshopping", or simply "shopping", is slang for the digital editing of pictures with image editing software. The term comes from Adobe Photoshop, the image editor most commonly used by professionals for this purpose, although other programs, such as Paint Shop Pro, Corel Photopaint, or the GIMP may be used. Adobe Systems, the publisher of Adobe Photoshop, discourages use of the term "photoshop" as a verb ^[1] out of concern that it may undermine the company's trademark; for this reason, some people have called the practice "photochopping".

1 Usage
2 Competitive photoshopping
- 2.1 Photoshop contests
- 2.2 Photoshop tennis
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
- 5.1 Photoshopping sites
- 5.2 Photoshop tennis sites

[edit] Usage

The EverCrack box cover is an example of photoshopped packaging.

Although professional graphic artists and designers might describe elements of their work as "photoshopping", the practice is more commonly associated with creating visual jokes on Internet sites. In this way, photoshopping can be seen as another way of producing cartoons, but without the need to generate original drawings. As such, the edits can be done in a very basic way, so it is clear that the image has been altered (often humour is derived from this fact), or in a hyper-realistic way so that the changes are seamless. The shorter term "shopped" is also frequently used to describe an image that has obviously been edited.

Examples of photoshopping include people changing a picture of a well known actress to make it appear as if she has posed nude. In other examples two or more pictures are combined together for humour value. Another example, commonly seen in MAD Magazine, involves the “rebranding” of products for satirical purposes; this often requires specialized skills including type design, because new letters must be drawn that match the style of an existing logo.

Similarly to photoshopping, some neologisms are derived from the names of other image editing packages, for example "to gimp up" an image.

Many Photoshopped images are propagated memetically via e-mail as humour or passed as actual news. Some well known images include Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten and Shark and Helicopter. The latter image was widely circulated as a National Geographic 'Image of the Year' and was later revealed to be a hoax.^[2]

The style and techniques of photoshopping were anticipated as early as the late 1960s, particularly by the surreal album cover photography of the British design group Hipgnosis.

[edit] Competitive photoshopping

Photoshopping is sometimes used as a form of entertainment, and in this form is often somewhat competitive. This may take the form of a contest, or sometimes as a game known as photoshop tennis.

[edit] Photoshop contests

Original painting "Leif Eriksson Discovers America" by Christian Krohg was a subject for the Norwegian championship online manipulation contest.

This collage, titled "Strong Mead" is a Photoshopped mix of the picture above and different paintings by Salvador Dalí and qualified for the final.

A Photoshop contest, or sometimes photochop contest, is an online game, in which a website or user of an Internet forum will post a starting image — usually a photograph — and ask others to photoshop the image to certain requirements, often to be humorous or to follow a particular theme. The users then edit the image to the requirements and post their results to the site. Once all the users have submitted their versions of the image, there is a poll on, or a judge reviews, the quality of the users' submissions. The user whose image is rated highest wins.

A large part of the humor in many of these contests involves the use of clichés — often the result of a tremendous repetition of the joke from a funny image; so much so that the original joke is lost and using the cliché itself is the joke. Such clichéd pictures can often become internet phenomena.

[edit] Photoshop tennis

Photoshop tennis is a game played through sequential alternating photoshopping of an image. It is generally played with two players^[3], though doubles matches, as in the sport tennis, or other multiplayer matches are theoretically possible. The players pick a starting image, or one is "served" by a player, then another player makes some sort of alteration to the image in any graphics manipulation package that they like. He or she then sends that altered image to the other player or players, usually via email or by posting the image to a Photoshop tennis forum, who then edits that image and sends it back to the first player. This process goes back and forth until a predetermined number of rounds have elapsed, or the players otherwise wish to end the game. When the final round is over, there may be an independent judge who determines whom has played the best shots, and declares that person the winner, or players may play without a clear winner. Sometimes extra rules can be enforced, such as sticking to a particular software package, or keeping to a particular theme.