Erotic Photo Hunt Photoshopper Advises, “Don’t Go for the Breasts First”

At the Philadelphia City Paper, Emily Guendelsberger interviews the head Photoshopper for Erotic Photo Hunt, absurdist and resolutely non-erotic bar pastime of legend. Jim Hartman’s been at it for 13 years, even though he was “hired as a writer… I didn’t even know what Photoshop was when I started here; I had a really quick training thing on it. So my Photoshop skills are not the best — which I think is one of the attractions of the game, how goofy the changes are?” A few excerpts from the Q&A:

CP: […] The Chippendales version is noticeably easier. Why is that?

JH: Well, there were very limited content choices; they just don’t have a gigantic library of pictures. We were sort of stuck with whatever they had at the time. And with the women, they’ve usually got a bra or jewelry or something on; if a guy doesn’t have anything on, it’s really tough to find five things to change. The women’s photos we have thousands to look through; with the men, the last batch we bought has about 200 photos, of which we could use about 120. It’s just very hard to find, uh, quality male erotic content.

CP: What’s the funniest Photoshop job you remember?

JH: One of the people who used to work here, she was a little more advanced at Photoshop than the rest of us — at one point she put a cat in the picture shooting lasers out of its eyes.

Recent changes at Megatouch, the company that produces these countertop bar games, also reflect the rise of the gig economy:

CP: How many people do the Photoshopping?

JH: At one point there were five of us; now we work with freelancers, aside from me, there’s three other people doing it.