Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2023: Week 12
A manip is a photo manipulation, often depicting TV and movie characters in situations different from canon.
Manips alter and manipulate the photo source (often a screencap or promo picture) in such a way that it shows something different than it did before. There are also crossover manips that depict characters from difference source materials interacting together. Within book and comics fandoms, manips can also be used to depict a fancast; showing a fan's preferred actor/actors playing the role of canon characters.
Manips can be used as fanfiction covers, banners, and illustrations. They are also used in vids, icons, and multimedia installations, and of course they can stand on their own as individual artworks.
A vernacular non-fannish equivalent is a photoshopped image. The technical term for this process and the resulting image is photomontage, "combinations of photographic images, or photographic with other images, such as architectural drawings, usually arranged into a somewhat unified image."According to Getty, photomontage is distinct from collage, which is an assemblage not intended to look seamless. However, photomontage is often used to describe a collage composed of photographs. Some manips are done crudely on purpose and could be described as examples of collage.
The term fan edit is used on Tumblr more frequently than manip; however, fan edit is broader and potentially includes almost any digital manipulation of photographs, including changing the color.