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Edit personal pictures and images found online with a variety of tools

Edit personal pictures and images found online with a variety of tools

Vote: (3,021 votes)

Program license: Paid

Developer: Adobe

Version: 2024-25.3.1

Works under: Mac

Also available for Windows

Vote:

Program license

(3,021 votes)

Paid

Developer

Version

Adobe

2024-25.3.1

Works under:

Also available for

Mac

Windows

Pros

  • A gigantic selection of editing tools to use
  • Can make anything you want in terms of an image
  • The effects of the Brush tools are ultra realistic
  • Typically runs very smoothly without crashing or freezing

Cons

  • A vast amount of tools that are tough to learn and master
  • Program can run very processor intensive and lag you down

Considered by many to be the undisputed king of all home-based photo editing software platforms

An Overview of Adobe Photoshop

As most people may find out when tinkering with images online, editing photos is a pretty easy thing to do, at least for the basics like cropping and resizing them. However, when it comes to layering, adding textures and filters, text, and truly working magic, that requires a real editor. This is why so many have turned to Adobe Photoshop for many years.

Photoshop, as it's widely known, is one of Adobe's greatest accomplishments and works with both the Mac and PC. Overall, it is considered to be the most advanced photo editing software package available. There are some imitators on the market, but none provide quite as many features for editing as Photoshop.

It's a relatively large program, however, and it can eat up a lot of your RAM and CPU usage overall. It's also definitely considered a professional application, that while anyone can learn to use it, the learning curve is steep and lengthy.

What Adobe Photoshop Is and What It Does

Photoshop is on the Mount Rushmore of editing programs for your home computer. Its features are vast and varied, and to this day people are still learning cool things that they can do with the program. This editor can handle everything from simple cropping and touch-ups to make people's selfies look better, all the way up to creating actual 3D designs and characters for use in video game applications.

There are so many tools that come with Photoshop, in fact, that most people find it overwhelming. While everything is literally at a user's fingertips, said user may have to really tinker around for weeks and watch tutorials before they're ready to dig into the features.

Though to put a fine point on it, Adobe Photoshop is the go-to editor for creation and transformation, which goes well beyond the simplistic toolkit of most editing programs.

Features of Adobe Photoshop

Digging into the program's features, you find so many different tools that range from neat and simple to awesome and complex. The Magic Wand can blend and mimic and blur and transform images. Layering tools can allow you to make something as complex and varied as you desire. Selection and Brush tools open you up to true artistic expression.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You also have Adjustment tools for layers, a Clone Stamp tool for matching and cloning areas, Blend Modes, a Liquid tool, detailed Crop tools and pixel tools, and so much more. The features of Photoshop would take an encyclopedia volume to touch on properly. Suffice to say that this is a very high-end, detailed image editor that can do endless things.

Adobe Photoshop has so many unique editing features that it may win the Internet in terms of how many tutorial videos are made discussing how to use it. Just go to any social streaming platform and you will find an endless array of tutorial videos teaching you how to use the many features.

Pros and Cons of Adobe Photoshop

Pros

  • A gigantic selection of editing tools to use
  • Can make anything you want in terms of an image
  • The effects of the Brush tools are ultra realistic
  • Typically runs very smoothly without crashing or freezing

Cons

  • A vast amount of tools that are tough to learn and master
  • Program can run very processor intensive and lag you down