Adobe Photoshop
Let's
take a look at some details on what you can do with Photoshop.
The software was designed to do just what its name says, to be
your own personal photo shop. Edit your own photos and then print
them out. But it's become more than just that, people now use it
more, it seems, to edit pictures and graphics for the internet.
With that in mind, Adobe created ImageReady to
take web design a step farther. ImageReady now comes bundled with
Photoshop, I'll go more in-depth on ImageReady's features in a later page. To start, Photoshop has many color options:
There's so many different things you can do with Photoshop, I haven't even used the program to it's full capacity myself. If you took a picture with your digital camera, and there wasn't enough light, you can use the reduce grain filter to fix it. If you scanned in a picture that has dust or scratches on it or if you want to get rid of wrinkles or blemishes, both things can be fixed using the healing brush. Got red eyes in your picture? Photoshop can fix that too with one-click red-eye correction. There's optical lens correction to fix common lens distortions you may come across. Smart sharpen will fix blurred images.
There's painting and drawing tools making it easy to create graphics from scratch or to draw over top of an existing one. There's also 95 different filters that will modify your pictures in ways you may not have thought of. And on and on, it just doesn't seem to stop. The best part is, you can search the web and find brushes, plug-ins, fonts and tons of other add-ons to take your Photoshop experience a step further.
There's so much you can do with Adobe Photoshop that I honestly couldn't tell you everything on this page; mostly because I don't know everything there is to know about Photoshop. But what's the best way to learn how to use software? To use it! Trial and error, mess around with it for a while and then you can get the feel for it. There's also a ton of tutorials out there on the web that will teach you Photoshop basics. Here, I'll help you out and save you some time with your search engine:
Those sites should help you out a lot. You'll probably know more about Photoshop than I do in no time. Photoshop will work on both Windows and Mac operating systems. If you find Photoshop to be too expensive for you then Adobe has a cheaper solution. It's called Photoshop Elements, but with a smaller price tag comes a smaller amount of modifications you can do. It's just that, the basic elements of Photoshop. So whichever you decide, I'd hope you'd pick Adobe. They're at the top of the image creation/editing software market in my mind.
- RGB Colors - Which are all the colors you can make with the primary colors (red, green & blue). Most TVs and computer monitors use this color scheme.
- CMYK Colors - This is a mix of 3 colors too with a key color (cyan, magenta, yellow & the key = black). This seems to be the colors that inkjet printers use.
- Lab Colors - Shows all the colors visible to the human eye and is easier to make color corrections to.
- Grayscale Colors - Uses many shades of gray, this is a step up from using just black and white; there's no in between with black and white.
- Bitmap Colors - Colors used when viewing or creating bitmap images, there's a lot less color variation and detail.
- Duotone Colors
- A color scheme that blends between one and four colors. If
you've ever used sepia on your digital camera or otherwise, that's a
duotone, it's yellow and black mixed.
There's so many different things you can do with Photoshop, I haven't even used the program to it's full capacity myself. If you took a picture with your digital camera, and there wasn't enough light, you can use the reduce grain filter to fix it. If you scanned in a picture that has dust or scratches on it or if you want to get rid of wrinkles or blemishes, both things can be fixed using the healing brush. Got red eyes in your picture? Photoshop can fix that too with one-click red-eye correction. There's optical lens correction to fix common lens distortions you may come across. Smart sharpen will fix blurred images.
There's painting and drawing tools making it easy to create graphics from scratch or to draw over top of an existing one. There's also 95 different filters that will modify your pictures in ways you may not have thought of. And on and on, it just doesn't seem to stop. The best part is, you can search the web and find brushes, plug-ins, fonts and tons of other add-ons to take your Photoshop experience a step further.
There's so much you can do with Adobe Photoshop that I honestly couldn't tell you everything on this page; mostly because I don't know everything there is to know about Photoshop. But what's the best way to learn how to use software? To use it! Trial and error, mess around with it for a while and then you can get the feel for it. There's also a ton of tutorials out there on the web that will teach you Photoshop basics. Here, I'll help you out and save you some time with your search engine:
Those sites should help you out a lot. You'll probably know more about Photoshop than I do in no time. Photoshop will work on both Windows and Mac operating systems. If you find Photoshop to be too expensive for you then Adobe has a cheaper solution. It's called Photoshop Elements, but with a smaller price tag comes a smaller amount of modifications you can do. It's just that, the basic elements of Photoshop. So whichever you decide, I'd hope you'd pick Adobe. They're at the top of the image creation/editing software market in my mind.
Do you have a website or take a lot of pictures with a digital camera?
I know I do both. Websites always need flashy and original
graphics on them, if you want to stand out from the rest. And it
always seems like you need to edit a picture that didn't come out too
well before you print it or add it to an online photo album. To
be honest, graphic and photo editing has become a hobby for a lot of
people out there. I even came across a site that has contests to see who can edit a picture in the most creative way.
I haven't seen a better graphics editor out there than Adobe Photoshop. It really is a leader in image manipulation. It doesn't matter what you want to do with your image, if you can think it, you can probably do it with Photoshop. You can take a blank picture and create something out of nothing. You could start creating your own digital cartoons or edit pictures in a humorous way to send to your friends. Or you can just simply brighten up a picture that came out too dark or fix those annoying red eyes. Once you start using Photoshop, you'll find yourself hooked on making your photos look the best they possibly can. This is one addiction your family won't mind you having.
I haven't seen a better graphics editor out there than Adobe Photoshop. It really is a leader in image manipulation. It doesn't matter what you want to do with your image, if you can think it, you can probably do it with Photoshop. You can take a blank picture and create something out of nothing. You could start creating your own digital cartoons or edit pictures in a humorous way to send to your friends. Or you can just simply brighten up a picture that came out too dark or fix those annoying red eyes. Once you start using Photoshop, you'll find yourself hooked on making your photos look the best they possibly can. This is one addiction your family won't mind you having.