WHY ADOBE PHOTOSHOP IS THE MOST WELL-USED EDITING SOFTWARE
If one were to make a recipe for long-lasting success and undying popularity, you'd have to add a few cups of brilliance, branding and hard work. But perhaps the most valuable element would be a little luck and some quick thinking. After all, it was a young PhD student in 1986 by the name of William N. Berry who acted quick when he noticed his Mac Plus (only the 3rd Macintosh model computer ever) did not display gray scale photos on its 1-bit black and white monitor. Some might have complained and others may not have noticed. William N. Berry saw opportunity.
Then, add in a quart of novelty. William brother John, a special effects coordinator on the 1st Star Wars movie began helping William with coding to make the first version of editing software that manipulated photos and images. In 1987, they would call their finished product Image-Pro. The name and the software was shopped around to many companies, but no one would bite. At last, Adobe saw tremendous value and decided to partner with them.
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Finally, add in a few teaspoons of business savvy. Adobe smartly branded and bought the rights to the software in 1990, calling it "Photoshop" instead of "Image-Pro." The name alter proved to be a brilliant move. Computer passionate, media giants and tech nerds alike loved the Adobe manufacture, eventually making "Photoshop" a pop culture / action word. Magazine companies, newspapers and web designers have been loyal fans of the photo editing software for many years. "Photo shopped" and "shopped" are often used verbs that are referring to the photos and images edited by the Adobe Photoshop program. It's been hard for competitors to divided themselves because "Photoshop" gets referred to just about any image manipulating software.
Different times per year, tech organizations mostly run Photoshop competitions (often referred to as "The photo chop Contest") online where people post photos and designers creatively manipulate the photo with a graphics editor. While there are many photo editing competitors today, the majority still go with the real recipe. Adobe Photoshop's popularity lives on.
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How to use this Photoshop tools in image editing
To edit a photo we use various tools like Sharpen too, Dodge tool, Crop tool, Straighten tool, Spot healing brush tool, Marquee tool/ Lasso tool and so on.
Sharpen tool
Sometimes, certain parts of a image can look a bit fuzzy and stained out. To bring more definition to the details in your image, you can use the sharpen tool for editing your image. Click the sharpen tool in the tool bar and click on the fields of the image that you’d like to enhance.
Other way to do this is by applying a filter. In the main menu, go to Filter >> Sharpen >> Sharpen. This will sharpen the images as a whole and increase the definition. You can see the effect of the sharpening in the image here where the sides of the (delicious!) cake slice are more defined after using the sharpen mask.
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DODGE TOOL
This tool is really a blessing in disguise! If a image is underexposed in only certain places, increasing the overall exposure will blow out the brighter fields. In similar cases, the dodge tool comes to the rescue. Click the dodge tool from the tool bar then brush it over the underexposed fields. Voila! They are bright now. You can see how the right side of the image below is brighter after using the dodge tool!
CROP + STRAIGHTEN TOOL
Despite all the funny path we position ourselves while shooting images, some of them may turn out crooked. We can fix the off-position, crooked images by using the crop tool. When you select the crop tool then a small arrow appears at the corners of your image which you can use to rotate the image. Rotate the image until it’s aligned properly and then crop it to cut the extra bits from the corners of the image. In the image below, I used the crop + straighten tool to align the lines on the white board with the overall frame of the image.
SPOT HEALING BRUSH
For all those times when a tiny speck of dust makes its way into the image then the spot healing brush comes in handy. Select the spot healing brush and click on the fields that you want to clear up. If there are big areas in the images that you want to clean up, you can increase the brush size at the top in the toolbar settings to make it faster. I used the spot healing brush to cut a few ink splatters and dust from my image – easy peasy!
MARQUEE / LASSO TOOL
Do you want to crop your images into a circle, a star or any fun figure? You can use the marquee / lasso tool to draw out the figure and crop the photo. This can be very useful while making blog post graphics or a circular profile picture.
To edit a photo we use various tools like Sharpen too, Dodge tool, Crop tool, Straighten tool, Spot healing brush tool, Marquee tool/ Lasso tool and so on.
Sharpen tool
Sometimes, certain parts of a image can look a bit fuzzy and stained out. To bring more definition to the details in your image, you can use the sharpen tool for editing your image. Click the sharpen tool in the tool bar and click on the fields of the image that you’d like to enhance.
Other way to do this is by applying a filter. In the main menu, go to Filter >> Sharpen >> Sharpen. This will sharpen the images as a whole and increase the definition. You can see the effect of the sharpening in the image here where the sides of the (delicious!) cake slice are more defined after using the sharpen mask.
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DODGE TOOL
This tool is really a blessing in disguise! If a image is underexposed in only certain places, increasing the overall exposure will blow out the brighter fields. In similar cases, the dodge tool comes to the rescue. Click the dodge tool from the tool bar then brush it over the underexposed fields. Voila! They are bright now. You can see how the right side of the image below is brighter after using the dodge tool!
CROP + STRAIGHTEN TOOL
Despite all the funny path we position ourselves while shooting images, some of them may turn out crooked. We can fix the off-position, crooked images by using the crop tool. When you select the crop tool then a small arrow appears at the corners of your image which you can use to rotate the image. Rotate the image until it’s aligned properly and then crop it to cut the extra bits from the corners of the image. In the image below, I used the crop + straighten tool to align the lines on the white board with the overall frame of the image.
SPOT HEALING BRUSH
For all those times when a tiny speck of dust makes its way into the image then the spot healing brush comes in handy. Select the spot healing brush and click on the fields that you want to clear up. If there are big areas in the images that you want to clean up, you can increase the brush size at the top in the toolbar settings to make it faster. I used the spot healing brush to cut a few ink splatters and dust from my image – easy peasy!
MARQUEE / LASSO TOOL
Do you want to crop your images into a circle, a star or any fun figure? You can use the marquee / lasso tool to draw out the figure and crop the photo. This can be very useful while making blog post graphics or a circular profile picture.
