Hey, Adobe® … Photoshop® THIS!

Always capitalize and use trademarks in their correct form.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.

INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.

INCORRECT: The image was Photoshopped.

INCORRECT: The image was Adobe® Photoshopped.

Trademarks must never be used as slang terms. —Permissions and trademark guidelines (Adobe.com)

Somebody hand me an aspirin — I’m crying in my coke here, because lawyers simply aren’t real people. I recognize that the company has an obligation to protect its trademark so people don’t xerox it so much its value lands in the dumpster — but this prescriptive grammar twaddle (look that up in webster’s) won’t exactly make photoshoppers quivver like Jell-O. The strategy is at best a legal band-aid.

Adobe’s website also uses, without the ® symbol, “whiteout,” “escalator,” “Frisbee“, “gramophone,” “linoleum,” “cellophane,” and “spam“. I think I’ve made my point, but if anyone would like to keep searching for additional evidence that Adobe doesn’t live in the same world it wants users of its products to live in, check out this Genercized Trademark list.

5 thoughts on “Hey, Adobe® … Photoshop® THIS!

  1. Yeah…but is this one of those sensationalist/scare tactic articles you’ve put up here? I mean, I don’t think that adobe has any legal power to force you to do this, any more than you would have to cite the computer manufacturer as the person who’s computer you used to photoshop the document…

  2. Oh, and on whose authority does the Adobe marketing drone announce “Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.”? My point was to prove that statement wrong — trademarks frequently become common terms (thought not necessarily slang — that’s another insidious hidden persuasive element. It’s a big stretch to call the generic use of “photoshop” slang.

  3. You’re right, Will! Adobe is merely trying to scare us! We shouldn’t… oh, wait… I’m the one employing a scare tactic? Heh. Maybe.

    Should it ever become necessary for Adobe to defend one of its trademarks in court, it has to be able to demonstrate a history of protecting the trademark. Now that TV shows are turning to product placement as a form of revenue, the bean-counters who control popular culture will probably be watching treatment of brand names very carefully.

    I suppose what irked me is that the marketers are using the genre of an online writing handout (with “CORRECT” and “INCORRECT” writing samples) in order to promote their corporate message. And the “CORRECT” sentence is a horribly clunky marketing slogan — the kind of stupid quote that only appears in marketing press releases. Further, the language implies that any digital manipulation will “enhance” the image, instead of the more neutral “modified” or such emotionally nuanced terms as “altered,” “distorted,” or “turned into a hideously offensive and therefore hilarious abberation by the twisted but very talented sickos at fark.com”.

  4. Geez. I read this the day AFTER my post on website problems. Thank God I noted that I used Corel Photo Shop instead.

  5. Hah…hilarious response, Dennis! I empathize, too…trademarking is dicey stuff, shadier than copywriting in many ways. And what better free advertising IS there than branding yourself right into the lexicon of everyday life? Sheesh. But the problem here isn’t with the writers who are free to express whatever they want to some degree — it’s with publishers who edit the writing, out of fear they’ll be sued if they don’t fix these elements in their “product.” This is all a game for the rich…who do, in these ways, try to master and control our language as a symbolic economy. Thank god for transgressive discourse, then!

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