Photoshopping has become very popular in the past several years after Adobe created Photoshop in the late 1980s, so a website allowing creative juices to flow was needed. The website Worth1000 allows people to manipulate images into artwork for contests.

The creators of the website, Avi Muchnick and Isreal Derdik, came up with the title of Worth1000 in 2001 after a well-known phrase, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ The website was not officially launched until January 2002.

Worth1000 is a place for artists to enter into contests, use the site for storage for their work and is a place for people to simply view artwork in the galleries.

One of the many features that attracts people to the website is the many different Photoshop cash contests. There is even a contest in honor of Heath Ledger, who tragically died Jan. 22. Another pretty cool contest was one where artists predicted our governor’s next job. These cash contests, which registered members can enter for free, are voted on a scale from one to 10 by registered members.

More than anything, Worth1000 acts as a steppingstone for artists to put their artwork out there for the world — and maybe their future employers — to see their potential.

Aside from the contests, one of the other features that attracts web browsers is the gallery, which allows people to view all entries of all contests.

Although there are fierce — and just a little insane to come up with such disturbing artwork — artists, they seem to be more than willing to give tips on the forum and tutorial pages.

Worth1000 offers over 90 Photoshop tutorials for someone like me, who hasn’t a clue how to manipulate an eye or a frog, to get my hands dirty and learn a few tricks.

Worth1000 offers tutorials which range from how to turn someone like Tom Cruise into an alien, how to draw hair using Photoshop, how to make bubbles and how to turn someone like Mandy Moore into a zombie.

Back to the frog; the first time I entered the website, a gorgeous, bright-orange frog with its upper body and lower body attached only by what looked like a single spiral of orange peel hopped onto the screen. It was the picture of the day.

Digammo manipulated it and called it Frogerine.

Every day, a new picture is featured to intrigue new-comers into learning about Photoshop and the website, and allow advanced ‘photoshoppers’ to up their game.

Deur Julie Tcha can be reached at [email protected]