What is Photoshop? A Comprehensive Guide

Adobe Photoshop has become the industry standard for photo editing software, having been around since the early 1990s and now used by most of the top newspapers, magazines, and online publications in the world. But why is it so popular? How does it work? And what can you do with it? This comprehensive guide to Photoshop will answer all your questions and more as you discover what’s made this software such an indispensable tool since its introduction.

History of Photoshop

Before Photoshop, there was a lesser-known program known as Adobe Imageready. This program was produced by a small team of workers at Aldus Corporation in Redmond, Washington. Imageready was intended to be an image-editing tool like Photoshop, but it lacked many key features and because of that, was often compared unfavorably to Photoshop. Shortly after releasing Imageready and then watching sales disappointingly plummet, Aldus Corporation merged with Adobe Systems in 1994.

Basic Terminology

Photoshop has a confusing array of terminology to describe its many tools and features. This quick guide provides definitions for some of these common terms. One note: Photoshop’s menu bar (File, Edit, and so on) differs depending on whether you’re using Windows or MacOS, but most of its functionality (and all covered in this book) works identically regardless of platform. I use MacOS when describing general usage and refer to Windows under MacOS-specific contexts only.

Digital Editing vs. Analog Editing

Many still photographers and photojournalists will argue that digital editing, such as that done in Photoshop, is no different than analog editing, which was done with darkroom chemicals and film. While most digital editors would agree that both methods of editing are similar in nature—analog vs. digital has more to do with how a photo is captured than how it’s edited. Analog photography uses chemical processing and light sensitivity on a piece of exposed film to capture an image.

How to Use Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a powerful image-editing software tool that allows users to edit photos in myriad ways. With an abundance of tools, filters and effects that can be applied to images, it’s no wonder that many people feel overwhelmed by their options. Here are some tips for how to use Adobe Photoshop.
Learning basic photo editing skills on Adobe Photoshop will allow you to make your pictures look more professional or give them a new effect entirely. It may take some time before you feel comfortable enough with all of your options, but once you do, you will have access to one of digital photography’s most powerful tools.

History of Photography (Pre-Adobe)

The beginning of photography in 1826 when Joseph Nicephore Niepce took a photographic image that lasted long enough to be recorded. His photo was taken on a pewter plate coated with Bitumen of Judea. The bitumen hardened in proportion to light it absorbed and could be developed into a negative by washing with acid and then used to make prints on paper. In 1829, Louis Daguerre improved upon Niepce’s process with his daguerreotype method, which produced a direct positive print on silver-plated copper sheets. In addition to being easier and more convenient than its predecessors, Daguerre’s process produced sharper images than other methods at the time.

Introduction to Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator is a vector-based image editing tool that lets you create graphics such as logos, icons, avatars, and illustrations. If you have a business logo or product logo that was created in another program like CorelDraw or Microsoft Visio, Illustrator can be used to update and save it as an editable vector file. This makes it possible for you to change your logo’s colors at any time without losing quality. You can also use Illustrator to convert photographs into vectors so they are easier to modify. This tutorial will show you how!

Understanding Vector Graphics (vs. Raster Graphics)

At their core, raster images are comprised of pixels. They’re a series of still frames that, when played back at fast enough speeds (usually 30 fps), create movement. The more pixels you have, and the more colors those pixels can display, generally speaking, the higher quality an image will be. Vector graphics, on the other hand, aren’t made up of individual pixels—they’re made up of lines and curves drawn on a grid. Because they don’t use pixels to create images, vector graphics can scale infinitely without losing any detail or clarity; it doesn’t matter how big or small they get because they don’t need to rely on individual pixels to form shapes.

Also read:-Photoshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop