Photoshopping

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

The EverCrack box cover is an example of photoshopped packaging.

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

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.

1 Tools
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Tools

Modern image editing software has introduced two tools of particular use to Photoshoppers: the magic wand tool, which helps isolate an object for copying or deletion; and the clone tool, which can often fill in the gap left when an object is removed.