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Saturday, September 20, 2014

"Photoshopped"

      The tech term I decided to investigate was “photoshopped”, which means to alter or enhance an image with the Photoshop.  Photoshop was invented in 1990 but it took quite some time for it to become the well-known program it has today.  In fact, it wasn’t until 2005 that the word “photoshopped” appeared in popular newspapers like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune (it took the Los Angeles Times till 2006).  The word, even today, hasn't been used in many scholarly articles or research papers because, or at least what i believe, is that it isn't a very "scientific" term.  For the most part, since the term is directly associated with a specific computer program, it has always had the same meaning.  The one thing that I found interesting was how quickly the popularity of the word has grown.  Just look at this Google Ngram Viewer.



     As you can see this term continues to become more and more relevant.  It will be interesting to see where it stands, what it means, and how it is used in decades to come.

1 comment:

  1. Sort of crazy that the term started around when most of us did as well. I found the graph you included really interesting!

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