APhotoshop contest, or sometimesPhotoshop battle (often abbreviated to PS Battle), is anonline game, in which awebsite or user of anInternet forum will post a startingimage — usually aphotograph — and ask others to manipulate the image using somegraphics editingsoftware, usuallyAdobe Photoshop, however other editors are commonly allowed, such asCorel Photo-Paint,GIMP,PaintShop Pro,Paint.NET or evenMicrosoft Paint. People can also usevideo editing software to create these images, such asAdobe Premiere Pro,Kdenlive,OpenShot, orNCH VideoPad.
WhilePhotoshop is the industry standard image editing program,Adobe Systems, the publisher of Photoshop,discourages use of "Photoshop" to refer to anything other than their photo editing software, to prevent theirtrademark from becominggeneric.[citation needed]
A large part of the humor in many of these contests involves the use ofinternet memes.
Such contests have recently seen increasing participation on many blogs and forums. The popular internet communityReddit has a community called r/photoshopbattles devoted to the contests.
A more "underground" variety of these image manipulation jokes involves the blending of celebrity faces with nude orpornographic images commonly known asfake nudes, often combined with references to movies, music, magazines and other forms of relatedpopular culture.[citation needed]
Photoshop tennis (also known asPhotoshop Pong orPhotoshop battle (similar in its function to a "DJ battle" or "rap battle" inhip hop music) is a game played through sequential alternating (photoshopping) of animage. Photoshop tennis originated in graphics-relatedinternet forums in the late-1990s/early-2000s, and shares an earlier history with online image games such asSITO's "PANIC" (started January, 1994).[1] The game was made popular by art director Jim Coudal in 2001 as "Photoshop Tennis".[2] The matches on coudal.com were later renamedLayer Tennis after enabling the use of other software, and continued through four seasons of competition.[3]
Each match tennis is generally played with two competing players.[2] 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 chosen image editor (matches are not exclusive to Adobe Photoshop). They then send the altered image to the other player or players, usually viae-mail 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 independentjudge who determines who 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 one particularsoftware package, or keeping to a particulartheme.
