Adobe Photoshop

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Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Apple Macintosh and Microsft Windows. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll.

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Adobe Photoshop is software that is extensively used for raster image editing, graphic design and digital art. It makes use of layering to allow for depth and flexibility in the design and editing process, as well as provide powerful editing tools, that when combined, are capable of just about anything. Photoshop is specifically designed to allow users to create and edit raster images in multiple layers. These overlays or layers can support transparency and can also act as masks or filters that can alter underlying images in the layers below them. Shadows and other effects such as alpha compositing can be applied.

The latest version of Adobe Photoshop has been rebranded as Photoshop CC 2015.5, and offers a host of tool designed for web designers, photo manipulators, concept artists and graphic designers. The new licensing model is a monthly subscription rather than a one time fee for the software. Adobe hopes to recall all previously licensed versions by aggressive legal action. They wish to make it illegal to use outdated versions of Adobe Photoshop. All users are encouraged to conform to the new subscription based model.

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Because of the popularity and the massive array of functionality of Adobe Photoshop it is still the market dominate graphic manipulation application (c2019). The market dominance of this software has spanned three decades. However, due to their monopoly Adobe has not had motivation for any true innovation in this industry for many years, perhaps over a decade.

Adobe Photoshop is extremely popular. Originally this was clearly because nothing else available was nearly as powerful or feature rich. However, popularity is sometimes due to monopoly. This is typically the first advanced image manipulation software taught to students in academia for graphic design, web development, and desktop publishing. Students love the software as it is the only software they know.

Although Adobe Photoshop is the market dominate application for image manipulation it is not necessarily "still the best." Adobe licensing is Draconian as in very strict and overreaching, backed by Adobe's overly aggressive legal civil team some companies are now waking up and avoiding Adobe like the plague having in part to do with the fact that today there exists alternative that are equal or nearly equal to Adobe Photoshop.

The User Interface of Adobe Photoshop has never been intuitive. It takes considerable training to become proficient in the software. When compared to Jasc Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop is far more difficult to use because the UI is not logically constructed for the common computer user. It should be noted that Paint Shop Pro does more than Paint Shop Pro, however, it has been matched in features by a Free Open Source competitor called Gimp.

It is difficult to understand why graphic artists and desktop publishers continue to fork out big fees for Adobe software when FOSS Gimp can accomplish the same tasks in relatively the same way and is much more cost effective often being completely free.

The emerging world of new graphic software now threatens Adobe Photoshop by offering users practical full featured alternatives. Other Adobe market dominate products such as Flash Player are being dumped causing Adobe to lose massive chunks of market share in specific areas. Will Adobe continue to dominate the design and desktop publishing industry or will new competitors with fresh innovation and friendlier licensing continue to chip away at the Adobe monopoly?

Update: ADOBE WILL NO LONGER ALLOW YOU TO OWN YOUR OWN SOFTWARE. The Creative Cloud Photography Plan by Adobe may be the beginning of the end of Adobe if users reject the new subscription based licensing. Adobe wants to ban the use of all legacy versions of Photoshop and encourage users to pay a monthly fee to use the latest version. You will no longer be able to pay a reasonable one time price for the software. Instead, you pay each month that you intend to continue using Photoshop.

On social media users are making tweets and comments such as this one, "I will purchase and use software...I WILL NOT "RENT" software which is what Adobe is proposing."

  • Creative Suite 6 is no longer available at retail as of January 9, 2017

As of 2019, nearly all Adobe professional software is now available only through a Creative Cloud subscription. With Adobe Creative Cloud you maintain your license to use Adobe software and services by paying a subscription fee every year or every month like you would your cable or electric bill.

Did Adobe go back on their word? In 2012 Adobe promised that CS6 applications would remain on sale. Now you can get Photoshop only through a paid Creative Cloud membership.

popular culture

"Photoshop It" is slang which unfortunately promotes software owned by one of the worst computer software companies in existence today.

The software's name has thus become a generic trademark, leading to its usage as a verb examples including: "to photoshop an image", "photoshopping", and "photoshop contest."

Adobe Photoshop is probably the most commonly used tool by the fashion industry to retouch photographs.

"The entire fashion industry is ethically highly problematic," renowned German media scholar Thomas Knieper when referencing photo retouching techniques including the use of Adobe Photoshop.

The news media including what has recently been dubbed The Fake News from outlets like NBC and CNN often rely on Adobe Photoshop to enhance images they distribute with stories. There are many examples of Adobe Photoshop being used to perform unethical editing of photography from "Time magazine" darkening O.J. Simpson's mugshot which was thought to start allegations of racism to "The Economist" removing two people from their cover photo of US President Obama on a Louisiana beach during the BP oil spill. The news media used the software to edit a photograph of a United States soldier giving an Iraqi soldier water from a canteen while another soldier held him at gunpoint. The media removed the soldier with the water canteen making it appear as though an Iraqi solder was being abused at gunpoint.

Photoshop is a tool and "like any tool it can be used to do good things or bad things," Thomas Knoll, who invented Photoshop told CBS news in an interview. When used responsibly by the fashion industry, media organizations and the average citizen with a smartphone, Photoshop might remain a great editing tool for the next 25 years to come. However, models touched up with their bodies made to appear more idealistic has been linked with eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia by fans of these publications. Studies show that people who are often exposed to such heavily edited fashion pictures believe that what they see is the norm leading to mental health issues.

Shantanu Narayen, CEO and president of Adobe says, "Photoshop is one of the most recognised software brands in the world with tens of millions of users, and is the go-to application for digital image manipulation across all media: from print, to film, to the Web."


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