If you haven't already seen it, I suggest you pop over to http://www.worth1000.com and look at the Photoshopping going on there. A lot of the efforts are witty, satirical and cutting, and the best are subtle enough to not look like Photochops (the true hallmark of a good Photochop).

Oh, what is it? Well, the premise is that there are a bunch of Photoshopping contests. They always start with a theme, and are pitched at a certain skill level. Some involve messing with a particular image, some involve reworking a given artist's works or a particular genre, and some are pretty much free-for-alls. Many have a "theme post" which gives a taste of what's expected (often from a past contest on the same theme), and a time limit is set for entries (this can often be short, like 48 hours or so).

Contestants then have until that limit to create and submit entries. Once the contest ends, all entries become viewable and can be voted on by registered members of the site. The scores from voting decide who wins and loses.

The nice part is that contestants often provide original source images to give a before-and-after sort of look at what they did. Even better, there's a tutorials section that has quite a few walkthroughs of how a given image or effect was created.

For example, "Misfit Toys 2" was an advanced Photoshop contest with the following blurb:


I like the theme post that they came up with for that, and I also thought the theme post for "Quitting Time 2" was great.

There's some great stuff in there, and I've wasted countless hours browsing through many, many entries.

And no, I'm not connected with the site in any way (I'm not even registered there). I just think it's a brilliant idea and some of the results are amazing.

These are great - I've just wasted about an hour browsing through them - very clever.

kt