Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and mac OS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing, but in digital art as a whole. The software’s name has thus become a generic trademark, leading to its usage as a verb (e.g. “to Photoshop an image”, “photo shopping”, and “Photoshop contest”) although Adobe discourages such use.[5] Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, and duo tone. Photoshop uses its own PSD and PSB file formats to support these features. In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop has limited abilities to edit or render text and vector graphics (especially through clipping path for the latter), as well as 3D graphics and video.
Early history
Photoshop was developed in 1987 by two brothers Thomas and John Knoll, who sold the distribution license to Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1988. Thomas Knoll, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, began writing a program on his Macintosh Plus to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. This program (at that time called Display) caught the attention of his brother John, an Industrial Light & Magic employee, who recommended that Thomas turn it into a full-fledged image editing program. Thomas took a six-month break from his studies in 1988 to collaborate with his brother on the program. Later that year, Thomas renamed his program Photoshop and worked out a short-term deal with scanner manufacturer Barneyscan to distribute copies of the program with a slide scanner; a “total of about 200 copies of Photoshop were shipped” this way
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Can I download Photoshop for free?
The short answer is: yes – in a way. Photoshop is a paid-for image-editing program, but you can download a free trial of Photoshop for both Windows and macOS from Adobe
Plugins
Photoshop functionality can be extended by add-on programs called Photoshop plugins (or plug-ins). Adobe creates some plugins, such as Adobe Camera Raw, but third-party companies develop most plugins, according to Adobe’s specifications. Some are free and some are commercial software.Most plugins work with only Photoshop or Photoshop-compatible hosts, but a few can also be run as standalone applications.
Read also: Outstanding Photoshop Manipulation Tutorials
