Adobe Photoshop
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Adobe Photoshop | |
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![]() Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta running on Mac OS X |
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Developer: | Adobe Systems |
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Latest release: | CS2 (9.0.2) / 2006-09-13 |
Preview release: | CS3 beta (10.0) / 2006-12-15 |
OS: | Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows |
Use: | Raster graphics editor |
License: | Proprietary |
Website: | www.adobe.com/products/photoshop |
Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation, and, aside from Adobe Acrobat, is the best-known piece of software produced by Adobe Systems. It is considered the industry standard in most jobs related to the use of visual elements.[citation needed]
Photoshop is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Mac OS; versions up to Photoshop 9.0 can also be used with other operating systems such as Linux using software such as CrossOver. Past versions of the program were ported to the SGI IRIX and Sun Solaris platforms, but official support for this port was dropped after version 3.
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[edit] Features
Although primarily designed to edit images for paper-based printing, Photoshop is used increasingly to produce images for the World Wide Web. Recent versions bundle a related application, Adobe ImageReady, to provide a more specialized set of tools for this purpose.
Photoshop also has strong ties with other Adobe software for media editing, animation and authoring. Files in Photoshop's native format, .PSD, can be exported to and from Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects and Adobe Encore DVD to make professional standard DVDs, provide non-linear editing and special effects services such as backgrounds, textures and so on for television, film and the Web. For example, Photoshop CS broadly supports making menus and buttons for DVDs. For .PSD files exported as a menu or button, it only needs to have layers, nested in layer sets with a cueing format and Adobe Encore DVD reads them as buttons or menus.
Photoshop can deal with a number of different color models:
The most recent major version, released in 2007, is version 10. This iteration of the program is marketed as "Photoshop CS3." "CS" reflects its integration with "Adobe's Creative Suite" and a number "3" because it is the second version released since Adobe re-branded their products under the CS umbrella.
Photoshop CS3 features additions such as the ability to apply non-destructive filters, and a new selection tool named Refine edge that makes selection more streamlined.
In addition to the standard version of CS3, a version named CS3 Extended includes tools for manipulation of 3 Dimensional Objects and motion video. 3D objects can be directly imported to Photoshop, and textures applied, and video can be edited on a frame by frame basis from within the application.
The logo for this edition uses typography, with the letters 'Ps' shown in white on a gradient blue, in a move away from the recent 'feather' designs.
The latest version comes with Adobe Camera RAW, a plugin developed by Thomas Knoll which can read several RAW file formats from various digital cameras and import them directly into Photoshop. A preliminary version of the RAW plugin was also available for Photoshop 7.0.1 as a $99 USD optional purchase.
While Photoshop is the industry standard image editing program for professional raster graphics, its relatively high suggested retail price (US$600, approximately) has led to a number of competing graphics tools being made available at lower prices. To compete in this market, and to counter unusually high rates of piracy of their professional products, Adobe has introduced Photoshop Elements, a version of Photoshop with many professional features removed, for under US$100. This is aimed firmly at the general consumer market since the feature cuts make it less desirable for prepress work.
[edit] File formats
Photoshop has the ability to read and write raster and vector image formats such as .png, .gif, .jpeg, etc. It also has several native file formats:
- The PSD (Photoshop Document) format stores an image as a set of layers, including text, masks, opacity, blend modes, color channels, alpha channels, Clipping paths, and duotone settings. Photoshop's popularity means that the PSD format is widely used, and it is supported to some extent by most competing software.
- The PSB format is a newer version of PSD designed for files over 2 GB.
- The PDD format is a version of PSD that only supports the features found in the discontinued PhotoDeluxe software.
[edit] Industry impact
The development of digital image manipulation redefined the photographic post-production industry. It revolutionized the art of photo retouching and processing by streamlining workflows: intricate procedures which took hours or days, and could only be performed by skilled photographers, now became possible for amateur artists. Digital image manipulation has contributed greatly to the world of photography by enabling manipulations that were previously difficult or impossible, and by allowing non-destructive and easily reversible changes to images. Photoshop was responsible for many of the innovations that are now commonplace.
During the digital photography revolution of the 1990s, Photoshop became even more entrenched as the industry standard. Many photographers used the software to migrate to all-digital workflows, greatly increasing the quality of the finished image.
With the rise of graphics tablets, most notably from Wacom, programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter have been used to create original pieces of art. Using the pressure sensitive tablet can improve the effects of the paint brush, eraser, or other tools. Tablets are used worldwide by professional comic book illustrators, architects, studio artists, etc. Even ILM, the special effects company that worked for the Star Wars films, used tablets combined with Photoshop in post-production.
[edit] Culture
The term "photoshopping" is a neologism, meaning "editing an image", regardless of the program used (compare with Google used as a verb). Adobe discourages use of the term [1] out of fear that it will undermine the company's trademark. The term photoshop is also used as a noun referring to the altered image. After Adobe's discouragement of the term members of the community site PhotoshopContest.Com began using the terms chopped, chopping and chop as recognizable alternative. As of 2007 these terms are beginning to see use around the Internet.
Photoshopping images for humorous intent is popular amongst members of websites such as Something Awful and Fark. Photoshop contests have become a pastime for many users of the software.
The term is sometimes used with a derogatory intent by artists to refer to images that have been retouched instead of originally produced. A common issue amongst users of all skill levels is the ability to avoid what is referred to as "the Photoshop look" (although such an issue is intrinsic to many graphics programs).
[edit] Development
Brothers Thomas Knoll and John Knoll began development on Photoshop in 1987. Version 1 was released by Adobe in 1990. Early versions of Photoshop were branded as Knoll Software releases before partnership with Adobe was established. Install files for Photoshop 1.0 would fit on one 1.4 MB floppy disk at the time. Furthermore, the entire Photoshop 0.63 application with online manual fits comfortably on an 800 KB diskette and still leaves 200 KB of disk space free.
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About box for Photoshop 0.63.
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[edit] Release history
Version | Platform | Codename | Release date | Significant changes |
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0.63 | Macintosh | October 1988 | ||
1.0 | Macintosh | February 1990 | ||
2.0 | Macintosh | Fast Eddy | June 1991 |
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2.0.1 | Macintosh | January 1992 | ||
2.5 | Macintosh | Merlin | November 1992 | |
Windows | Brimstone | |||
IRIX, Solaris | November 1993 | |||
2.5.1 | Macintosh | 1993 | ||
3.0 | Macintosh | Tiger Mountain | September 1994 |
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Windows, IRIX, Solaris [2] | November 1994 | |||
4.0 | Macintosh, Windows | Big Electric Cat | November 1996 |
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4.0.1 | Macintosh, Windows | August 1997 | ||
5.0 | Macintosh, Windows | Strange Cargo | May 1998 |
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5.0.1 | Macintosh, Windows | 1999 | ||
5.5 | Macintosh, Windows | February 1999 |
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6.0 | Macintosh, Windows | Venus in Furs | September 2000 |
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6.0.1 | Macintosh, Windows | March 2001 |
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7.0 | Mac OS 'Classic'/Mac OS X, Windows | Liquid Sky | March 2002 |
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7.0.1 | Mac OS 'Classic'/Mac OS X, Windows | August 2002 |
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CS (8.0) | Mac OS X, Windows | Dark Matter | October 2003 |
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CS2 (9.0) | Mac OS X, Windows | Space Monkey | April 2005 |
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CS3, CS3 Extended (10.0) | Universal Mac OS X, Windows | Red Pill | April 2007 |
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[edit] Easter eggs
The first easter eggs appeared in Photoshop 2.5. Holding down the Command key while selecting About Photoshop 2.5... from the Apple menu, displays a secret About box, with a comical image of a wizard called Merlin T. Wizard. Since then, all versions of Photoshop contain secret About boxes with bonus images relating to that particular release's codename (Photoshop 2.5 was code named "Merlin"). Secret about boxes in Windows versions of Photoshop are activated by holding the Control key when selecting About Photoshop from the Help menu.
A Macintosh-only easter egg that was scrapped with the introduction of Photoshop 6.0 allows the viewing of the original Knoll Software About box, which was found in the beta-versions of Photoshop. To view this secret about box, simply hold the Option key while selecting About Photoshop... from the Apple menu.
In Photoshop CS, if the command (Apple) key is held down and the "About Photoshop" is clicked in the Apple menu, the "About Photoshop" is displayed with an abstract picture of what looks like a moon, with the name of 'Dark Matter'.
In Photoshop CS2, if the command (Apple) key (Ctrl for Windows) is held down and the "About Photoshop" is clicked in the Help menu, a window featuring "Adobe Space Monkey" is displayed.
In Photoshop CS3, the "Red Pill" would be displayed in a gray About box if the above was done in Mac OS X. On the right it would say "Adobe Red Pill" but with white holes in letters like P. Red Pill is CS3's codename.
There were also humourous credits in Photoshop 3.0 LE.
[edit] Alternatives
There are many other bitmap-graphics editors, some of the best-known being Corel Photo-Paint (bundled with CorelDRAW), Corel Painter, Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI and Ulead PhotoImpact. Other bitmap-graphics editors include Helicon Filter, the free GIMP or Paint.NET software, the shareware openCanvas software, and the commercial Pixel image editor.
In cinema, CinePaint (a fork of GIMP) has gained market share.
[edit] See also
- Comparison of raster graphics editors
- Digital image
- Digital image editing
- Digital Negative Specification
- Digital watermark
- Gamut
- Graphics file format
- Photoshop contest
- 2D computer graphics
- Adobe Photoshop Elements
[edit] References
- ^ Adobe Permissions and trademark guidelines
- ^ http://www.sunmanagers.org/archives/1999/0973.html
- ^ Photoshop and CDS
[edit] External links
- Adobe Photoshop Official Page
- Adobe Camera RAW
- For other external links, see Photoshop at the Open Directory Project (suggest site) .
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