This explanation was found to be incomplete after being featured as This Week's Explanation for Improvement. Despite a week of community editing, it did not reach our quality standards and remained incomplete. Before removing this notice, read the September 2026 nomination and the comic discussion to ensure the issues raised by the Explanation Improvement Project have been satisfactorily addressed:
The explanation could use some copyediting and reorganization, it is not polished and does not feel cohesive.
This is another comic in the My Hobby series. It plays on the then-popular internet meme "This Looks Shopped". Adobe Photoshop is a popular image editing application that was first launched in 1990, and it reached its peak in popularity around the 2000s as the industry standard for editing graphics. The verb "photoshop" (as in "to photoshop") is a verbalization/denominalization (informally known as verbing) of the noun "Photoshop", referring to the act of using editing software to digitally alter an image, often to make the image look more appealing, dramatic, or to trick people online. Its derived adjective "photoshopped" and its shortened version "shopped" are applied to an image that has been manipulated in this way. One particular popular usage of Photoshop is image compositing: combining two or more images together into a single, seamless picture. This allows the digital artist to create humorous and/or falsified scenarios, like making someone who does not hold a rapier hold one. Adobe Photoshop is still considered a prominent image editing service, but has since lost its monopoly in the market.
Cueball insists that real-life items can be digitally manipulated, even though it is generally not possible to do this to actual physical objects outside of a computer.[citation needed]Megan claims that the sabre she found is a 19th-century heirloom, but Cueball is insisting for fun that the sabre is in fact photoshopped, presumably for fun or to rile Megan up. He then goes on to cite the wrongness of the shadows as why the sabre is photoshopped. This is an especially bizarre claim to make, because real world objects generally cannot cast wrong shadows, unlike a photoshopped image might. Cueball could also be trying to annoy Megan by insisting it's photoshopped, and potentially 3D printed into an object that makes it look real.
Alternatively, calling the artifact "photoshopped" could be Cueball's unique and strange way of suggesting it's a fake. The joke could also refer to the paranoia some internet users have when trying to discern whether images online are real or edited, suggesting that this behaviour might extend into real-life situations, mistaking actual physical objects as "photoshopped" because of how petty such people can be.
This comic also unintentionally (probably) foreshadowed the rising and unavoidable presence of AI image creation and editing on the internet, several years after its publication. However, manipulating images on social media to create misleading content has been and still is very commonplace. Today, people would often accuse content creators or websites of using images generated by AI, as creating visual aids and content this way is considered lazy and minimizes the purpose of human artists. Identifying both photoshopped and AI images both follow the same base principle of examining minute details for inconsistency. With photoshopped images, it can include inaccurate shadows (as mentioned by Cueball) and differences in quality in sections of the image;[actual citation needed] with AI, the best tell is inconsistencies with reality.
The title text contains the second part of the internet meme, the complete text of which is: "THIS LOOKS SHOPPED / I CAN TELL FROM SOME OF THE PIXELS AND FROM SEEING QUITE A FEW SHOPS IN MY TIME." Most people have seen this from the popular image file formatJPEG, which uses an image compression algorithm that works by converting an image's color data into small blocks, changing those blocks into cosine frequency patterns, rounding off details human eyes cannot see easily, and packing the final data tightly. This works remarkably well, but can sometimes leave artifacts (noticeable distortions or errors in the image) that are visible when zooming in far enough. Cueball is treating Megan's eyes as literal digital images on a screen, claiming that he can tell that he and Megan are "wrong for each other" based on the supposed JPEG artifacts and pixels her eyes are made of.
Seeing in someone's eyes that you're wrong for each other is a common poetic/clichéd expression for the experience, during intimate moments, of recognising from something unidentifiable about someone's expressions or wider demeanor that there is a lack of personal chemistry between you. It is not usually based on the physical appearance of their irises.
The explanation only does a surface graze of the topic of photoshopping images.
Better explain what JPEG artifacts are.
Title text section needs to explain seeing in someone's eyes that they're wrong for you.
The explanation could use some copyediting and reorganization, it is not polished and does not feel cohesive.
Add an image to illustrate JPEG artifacts
Better explain the meme this comic is based on and the context behind it.
Add parallels to today's AI image editing.
While many alarming or suspiciously interesting pictures (and videos) have later proven to be 'shopped', I believe that Randall is commenting on the abysmal existence of a certain kind of person who cries foul on *any* picture that isn't straightforward.
They usually profess to be Photoshop experts and point out various 'defects' in the photo that 'prove' it has been manipulated.
This is just a (hopefully unconscious) attempt to appear more cynical, more intelligent and harder to fool than everybody else who has ignored the glaring evidence.
What makes it simultaneously amusing and annoying is that usually the commenter is patently, completely and obviously wrong - the image has in fact captured a real occurrence.
The original examples that come to mind are the Apollo 11 photographs from the surface of the moon, but the internet abounds with such. -- StephenP 108.162.219.223 18:28, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, like this pic of me from back then: ...which is clearly, completely natural. —Kazvorpal (talk) 15:42, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
To be entirely fair, with the advent of 3D printers, it will become possible to "shop" real-life objects. 108.162.218.101 00:03, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
This is already done with plastic surgery, although to a more limited degree, of course. All other physical alterations widely available to the public used on existing objects (that come to mind) are for practical means, such as fixing a refrigerator 172.68.46.11 19:35, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
Predicting a resurgence of this comic/dynamic with the advent of "looks AI generated". Reminds me a bit of 1306: Sigil Cycle in that there's something of an arms race between awareness of what makes something "look fake" and the fakery technology itself becoming able to fake those details. 172.70.230.197 (talk) 16:32, 30 January 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Huh. Meant to say that myself, but it seems someone did it first. 172.68.7.206 (talk) 02:12, 25 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
This but with AI image generation RG (talk) 00:56, 15 May 2026 (UTC)
“But sometimes leaves artifacts” still does not explain what an artifact is. SacrifycedStoat (talk) 17:32, 6 September 2026 (UTC)
Perhaps an example of a shopped pic would be in order? Probably would need an original for comparison. 7amiþmoi · 💬 · 📊 17:39, 6 September 2026 (UTC)
Photoshop vs. AI: I started a new paragraph in the article. It might be worth comparing accusations of 'shopping vs AI generation now. 158.173.67.206 18:39, 6 September 2026 (UTC)
I improved the part about AI images n along with basically everything else. someone should talk about how people can tell AI images are AI and compare how similar it is to the photoshop thing. Morpheus (talk) 03:15, 8 September 2026 (UTC)
crashing sounds because of a failiure of the explanation improvement project - user without signadure 2605:59c0:450b:3410:d9e6:2829:2571:7127 (talk) 21:48, 15 September 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~) Add comment
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The explanation only does a surface graze of the topic of photoshopping images.
.svg){kind=icon}
Better explain what JPEG artifacts are.
.svg){kind=icon}
Title text section needs to explain seeing in someone's eyes that they're wrong for you.
.svg){kind=icon}
The explanation could use some copyediting and reorganization, it is not polished and does not feel cohesive.
.svg){kind=icon}
Add an image to illustrate JPEG artifacts
.svg){kind=icon}
Better explain the meme this comic is based on and the context behind it.
.svg){kind=icon}
Add parallels to today's AI image editing.
