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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Adobe Photoshop Story

By David Peters

The effects you can achieve today with editing software are beyond what professional photographers years ago thought possible. Now is a time when there are no limitations on editing images- everything is possible and creativity is the only requirement to make outstanding pictures. There are thousands of programs that help us improve the photographs we take, but none have the respect of the professional and amateur community as Adobe Photoshop. The software is so closely linked with altering images that the term 'to Photoshop' has come to mean 'to enhance pictures'.

Do you want a picture of you, your family and a giraffe all dancing on the surface of Pluto? With Photoshop, anything you want is possible. With practice, you can make the vision of your wildest imagination come true. Effects that took large budgets and studios to create are now easy to produce with the click of a button.

One thing that Photoshop is closely associated with is isolating aspects of the image you don't want and removing them. This can be used to improve physical features, such as smoothing out damaged skin or covering up body piercings, and can even be used to remove whole objects from the image that detract from the photograph like a distracting person in the background. With Photoshop it is unlikely that you will be able to tell that any alteration has been done to the picture, as the software is so complex.

Photoshop is the industry standard for photography editing. This means that it is essential to learn how to use this application, but don't worry if you think it will be difficult. Like all good programs, it is easy to use and hard to master. The interface is accessible to the user, so that starting out is not complicated. If you feel you need help, ask any college students you know to teach you as they will probably be familiar with Photoshop.

The birth of Photoshop was in 1989 by the Knoll brothers. The software was being developed for their own use at the time, but the sophistication of the software made it clear that there was a market for Photoshop. They soon founded Adobe and began selling the program in 1990.

The success of Adobe is an outstanding example of the power of the internet. Software designed by Adobe is on nearly every computer in the world, as its free PDF reader has had such widespread popularity. The Adobe Reader is the standard PDF reader, just as Adobe Photoshop is the standard photo editor and is proof of Adobe's unique dominance of media-related software.

To become a master of Photoshop, you should find a copy that you can try things out with. Someone you know probably has it on their computer, so use their copy to try things out and get used to how Photoshop works. If your friend knows how to use the program, let them impress you with how powerful Photoshop can be. After that, you'll be hooked on Photoshop forever.

Downloading a copy for your own use will make it easier to practise using Photoshop. You can get a free trial version, but it will have limited features. The best thing to do is to buy a full version from Adobe as then you don't have to worry anymore and can concentrate on learning how to use the product. Photoshop is used so much, that it makes sense buying a copy. Once you own a copy, you may find that you spend hours experimenting and exploring the features. While this is a great way to get used to the features, specific learning in a Photoshop class can improve your learning curve and make you understand Photoshop faster.

When the time comes that you have mastered Photoshop, the only thing limiting what you can do will be your own creativity. You will have a powerful tool at your hands that can create any image you want, so now you can apply this to personal or business projects and be confident that you can pull anything off.

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