Photoshopping (alternatively, GIMPing) 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 practise, although other programs, such as Paint Shop Pro or the GIMP may be used. Adobe discourages use of the term [1] out of fear that it will undermine the company's trademark. The practise of photoshopping is possible because modern image editors made the work of altering images extremely easy, particularly with the clone tool in Photoshop.

Although professional graphic artists and designers might describe elements of their work as photoshopping, the practise 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.

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.

Photoshopping skills

A number of websites have arisen to provide a showcase for Photoshopping, including Worth1000 , B3ta, Fark, and Something Awful.

Many Photoshopped images are propagated memetically via e-mail as humour. Some well known images include Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten and Shark and Helicopter.

External links

• Worth1000
• B3ta
• Fark.com
• Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday contest