10.03.05
Adobe Photoshop Introduction
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editor (with some text and vector graphics capabilities) developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the market leader for commercial bitmap image manipulation, and probably the most well-known piece of software produced by Adobe Systems. It is usually referred to simply as “Photoshop”. Photoshop is currently only available for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows; versions up to Photoshop 7 can also be used with other operating systems such as Linux using software such as CrossOver Office. Past versions of the program were ported to the SGI IRIX platform, but official support for this port was dropped after version 3.
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 links with software for media editing, animation and authoring. It works with Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects & 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. Photoshop’s native file format (PSD or PDD) can be exported to and from Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Adobe Encore DVD. Photoshop CS broadly supports making menus and buttons for DVDs. For PSD or PDD 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.
PSD or PDD is a widely accepted file format. Competing bitmap image editing programs (such as Macromedia Fireworks, Corel Photo-Paint, Pixel32, WinImages, GIMP, Jasc Paintshop Pro etc.) can import and edit layered PSD or PDD files.
Photoshop can deal with a number of different color spaces:
sRGB color space (white point=D65) - “RGB” in photoshop
Lab color space (white point=D50) - “Lab” in photoshop
CMYK color model
Grayscale
The most recent version, as of 2005, is version 9. This iteration of the program is marketed as “Photoshop CS2″. “CS” reflects its integration with “Adobe’s Creative Suite” and a number “2″ because it is the second version released since Adobe rebranded their products under the CS umbrella. In an effort to break away from previous versions of the application and to reinforce its belonging with the new line of products, Photoshop even dropped one classic graphic feature from its packaging: the Photoshop eye, which was present in different manifestations from versions 3 to 7. Photoshop CS versions now use feathers as a form of identification.
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, and practically monopolises the high-end market, its price has led to a number of competing graphics tools gaining market share in the low-end and mid-range markets; some, such as the GIMP, are completely free. To compete in this market, and to counter unusually high rates of piracy of their professional products, Adobe have introduced a low-end program called Photoshop Elements, which is a cut-down Photoshop with many professional features removed, for under $100 US; this is aimed firmly at the consumer market, since the feature cuts make it unsuitable for prepress work.