Last Friday was the return of Coudal’s Photoshop Tennis in the form of Layer Tennis. I found myself checking back at 3 and pretty much losing my afternoon trying to follow the volleys. Great Idea in theory, but the volleys took way longer than the 15 min limit, and I don’t think it finished until 7 at night. It was much more fun to watch the progression at my own pace friday night, reading the commentary and then being able to see the entire match. There is no interactivity, so being live isn’t much of a benefit to the experience. Reading the forum, the majority of the early adopters spent post after post regurgitating how bad native Photoshop filters were (whats wrong with using blur effects?). Hey everyone, get over it!

These artists didn’t have to worry about relying on filters because they changed the concept, played with words, and reacted both thematically and visually. Well done first friday, it should be interesting to see how it evolves over the next few rounds. They also have the raw psd files for people to remix volleys, it should be interesting to see what people come up with.