Anton Shpigunov's Blog

Adobe® Photoshop® T®adema®k ®idiculousness

Recently, somebody gave me a curious link to Adobe’s official page on “proper use” of the Adobe Photoshop trademark. I first thought it was some joke. But once I saw that it was serious and official, I was petrified by a mix of astonishment, disbelief, hysterical laughter and sadness. Here’s a brief quote for those who don’t like to follow links:

Trademarks are not verbs.

Correct: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.

Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.

Correct: Those who use Adobe® Photoshop® software to manipulate images as a hobby see their work as an art form.
Incorrect: A photoshopper sees his hobby as an art form.
Incorrect: My hobby is photoshopping.

Trademarks must never be used in possessive form.

Correct: The new features in Adobe® Photoshop® software are impressive.
Incorrect: Photoshop’s new features are impressive.

Trademarks are proper adjectives and should be followed by the generic terms they describe.

Correct: The image was manipulated using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: The image was manipulated using Photoshop.

Trademarks must never be abbreviated.

Correct: Take a look at the new features in Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: Take a look at the new features in PS.

Now this is simply outrageous. They basically say I can’t say “to photoshop”, “Adobe PS” or even “this looks shopped”. The folks at Adobe are going waaaay beyond the edge for several reasons.

Firstly, if you own a trademark, you only own a proper name, and in some cases, the logo, and the law in some jurisdiction prohibits others to sell stuff with this trademark or logo on it. There are some exceptions (like Google rightfully suing e-squatters for making money off gogle.com, hoogle.com, gppgle.com, etc.), but this rule is generally true for most cases. Owning a trademark, however, does not mean owning the words with identical, let alone similar spelling. Which means Adobe cannot prohibit the usage of these words because they don’t even belong to them, in fact they can’t belong to anyone at all.

Secondly, what Adobe is attempting to do is to control the natural development of human language. Words tend to come and go as the language evolves to better suit the needs of its users. In order to be usable, the language has to have means for short and precise expression of widely occurring phenomena. Hence we have “google it”, “aspirin” (extending far beyond the original Aspirin by Bayer), etc. (see article on genericized trademarks). Having your trademark become so popular that people start using it to refer to a whole category of actions (in our case, photoshopping == image editing and enhancement) is in itself a great honor, and trying to reverse this process is not only obviously stupid and counterproductive for the trademark itself, but it is also as futile as, say, trying to piss against the wind. Good luck with that, Adobe lawyers.

Thirdly and finally, why even write these guidelines if they are unable to have them followed on their very own website? Here’s a quote:

Enjoy tight integration with Photoshop for streamlined use of Smart Objects, panorama stitching, HDR functionality, multiple-layer workflow, and more. See your edits automatically updated in Lightroom.

Let’s compare this to an earlier quote of their own:

Incorrect: The image was manipulated using Photoshop.

Ooops. Now they’re not only making up some ridiculous legalese crap and attempting to limit our vocabulary, but contradicting themselves by being unable to live up to their own standards. Besides, I suppose that “Lightroom” is also a trademark with similar “terms” to be followed.

Therefore, my position is that I’m continuing to use *any* words i choose despite the feeble attempts of legal prescriptivism by some corporation’s smartass lawyers, so go ahead, try and sue me =).