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Adobe Photoshop remains the undisputed reference for image editing software. Its ergonomics have been improved to also satisfy neophytes. Artificial intelligence is magic. It detects and automates dozens of tedious steps for impeccable rendering. This software is aimed more at professionals but is suitable for all creative people and image lovers who agree to pay a subscription. Before that, however, it is possible to download and try it for free on Windows and Mac.
Why use Adobe Photoshop?
Photoshop is undoubtedly the most famous photo editing software in the world. Moreover, in common parlance, "photoshopping" a photo has become the direct synonym for working on an image or photo editing, which directly testifies to its hegemony both in the professional and amateur world.
The reference to photo editing
The very essence of Adobe Photoshop lies in the fact of importing an image to then transform it, improve it, or adapt it to its needs. Photoshop supports all possible photo and image file formats, including RAW, DNG, NPC, and JPG. The software offers access to many tools for this work, each allowing one to act on different aspects of the photos, namely in particular the texture, the color, the saturation, or even the density of an element or an area.
The software can also rotate, crop, and resize a photo to match certain criteria (such as to make a photo less heavy in terms of weight, or to fulfill a certain specification). The software can also be used to correct defects (dust, cuts, etc.) or various imperfections (such as stains, and color differences). Photoshop is especially convenient thanks to its history: if the user makes a mistake, he can undo it and return to a previous state.
A versatile tool for drawing
In addition to the retouching functions, Adobe Photoshop is also a powerful drawing software (pencil, pen, brush...) with in particular the recent painting symmetry function. The user can duplicate elements or shapes, modify their dimensions and rotate them, repetitively. He is able to add sophisticated texts to create advertisements or posters, for paper or digital media.
Moreover, the software no longer works only in two dimensions, but also in 3D (extrusion and spherical panorama in particular) or in the video. Dynamic objects are bridges to communicate between the software of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. This software is often essential to prepare files before they are imported into Premiere Pro, Dreamweaver, or InDesign for example.
Always at the forefront of technology with AI
Sensei, Adobe's artificial intelligence is increasingly present in Photoshop and is starting to become a major tool. Adobe's flagship software allows you to move an object in a scene by automatically filling in the background. In this latest version, the user can also replace the sky without having to carry out tedious preparatory steps. The AI also doubles the resolution of the images by extrapolating the pixels in the "super-resolution" mode.
But, Sensei's power is even more spectacular with neural filters. Here, artificial intelligence analyzes and transforms faces. It changes the direction of the gaze or smoothes the imperfections of a face. A sad portrait can become smiling and vice versa. The AI also colors a black & white photo. These amazing functions are still in the beta phase and require an internet connection.
Layers, the nerve of war
The philosophy of Adobe Photoshop lies in the layers. These layers contain a set of changes to the image. It is independent and its modification, therefore, does not degrade the original image. The user can stack as many layers (grouped together or not) as he wishes. He can merge them, add them, subtract them, use only one area, only one component (red, green, blue...), or a property (transparency...) of this layer. With suitable filters, the colorimetry, contrast, sharpness, the rendering of a person or a landscape (perspective for example) are completely modified.
To work on raw files, Photoshop integrates Camera Raw to develop them, without going through third-party software like Lightroom. Other modules from other editors can be integrated. The software is often criticized for being difficult to access to the general public and for becoming a "gas factory". These criticisms are nuanced by the profusion of tutorials on the web.
Many tutorials available for the uninitiated
Photoshop has many features, which can be a little intimidating at first for novices. For these sometimes clueless users, Adobe offers a whole bunch of tutorials and introductory courses on its official website, in order to allow a smooth start.
How to use Photoshop?
you can download Photoshop on both Windows and macOS with parity of features between versions. Linux users will not be left out either despite the absence of an official port by the publisher, Adobe. Indeed, by using Wine, it will be possible to make the Windows version work on many Linux distributions, at the cost of some bugs and slightly reduced performance.
On Android, the screen size does not go well with a large photo editing software like Photoshop and we cannot currently download the application via the Play Store. An iPhone version is available, but it offers limited tools compared to the desktop version. The iPad, on the other hand, benefits from an almost complete version of the application with few differences compared to the macOS and Windows versions. Thus, the iPad version can be considered an alternative tool if you do not have direct access to your computer.
Rate
For years, Photoshop has been marketed in the form of a relatively expensive single license. This has made it one of the most pirated applications with a certain number of cracks circulating on the Web, both for the Windows version and for the Mac version. faced with the scale of the phenomenon, Adobe revised its business model and after making a free download available, the publisher introduced a monthly subscription through Creative Cloud. Thus, Adobe still offers a "standalone" version of its photo editing software, but it is also possible to download it with the Creative Cloud application which offers all the tools of the editor.
The alternatives to Photoshop
In the field of photo editing, Adobe has many software widely considered the most effective, such as for example Lightroom, or the light and free version of Photoshop, Photoshop Express. However, there are many other external alternatives to the Adobe suite.
Among the paid software, Affinity Photo is one of the most powerful on the market. It allows in particular to do professional photo editing and includes many editing tools as well as various features, among which the modular structure of the Personas.
On the free and open source software side, there are several different alternatives to edit photos simply on Windows, Mac, or Linux: we are talking, for example, about Darktable or Gimp, considered the best free editing software on the market, and viable options for those who do not wish to take advantage of Photoshop.
