"Photoshop" as a verb

The terms "photoshop", "photoshopped" and "photoshopping", derived from Adobe Photoshop, are ubiquitous and widely used colloquially and academically when referencing image editing software as it relates to digital manipulation and alteration of photographs. The term commonly refers to digital editing of photographs regardless of which software program is used.

Trademark owner Adobe Inc. objected to what it referred to as misuse of their trademarked software, and considered it an infringement on their trademark to use terms such as "photoshopped" or "photoshopping" as a noun or verb, in possessive form or as a slang term. However, Adobe's attempts to prevent "genericization" or "genericide" of the company's trademark failed. Separately, the Free Software Foundation advises against using "photoshop" as a verb because Adobe Photoshop is proprietary software.

In popular culture, the term photoshopping is sometimes associated with montages in the form of visual jokes, such as those published on Fark and in Mad magazine. Images may be propagated memetically via e-mail as humor or passed as actual news in a form of hoax. An example of the latter category is "Helicopter Shark", which was widely circulated as a so-called "National Geographic Photo of the Year" and was later revealed to be a hoax.