Adobe Photoshop is the world standard for working with digitized
photographs - it does a fine job, just as you would expect such an expensive application. However, it would not necessarily be the best program to
use to make artwork, drawing or animations, for example, since it was not
designed with those in mind.
Although you may one day need to work with Photoshop
on a professional basis, it is a very expensive program and you should hesitate to
purchase it for home use unless you are either very rich or very
interested in digital photography. Otherwise, Adobe has a 'light' version of
Photoshop called Photoshop Elements which has most of the features of
Photoshop and should cost less than 100 €. Click
HERE
for more info on Photoshop Elements. Alternatively, PaintShop Pro offers many of the
features of Photoshop at an affordable price and is compatible with the
Photoshop file format. Click HERE
for the official Adobe site. Click HERE for
PaintShop Pro. The Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free
alternative to Photoshop, with many of the same features - I strongly
recommend it for you unless you are intending to become a graphics
professional or are very rich or a criminal (someone who uses pirated
software). You can find my Gimp course
HERE. Although the GIMP is powerful and free it had a major
weakness until recently - the way it spawned many windows all over the
place, leading to some confusion. But GIMP 2.8 and later has the
option of running in single-window mode, removing the weakness and
making the GIMP my graphics program of choice. Download a copy today but
make sure it is 2.78 or later!
Photoshop has many uses, including:
 | It can be a useful utility for converting images between different file
formats such as gif, jpeg, tiff, etc. (more on file formats later). Or it
can be used to adjust image size or file size e.g. for faster loading on a
web page.
|
| It can be used to correct faults in individual photographs, by adjusting colors,
contrast, brightness, sharpness etc to give an image that is as true to life
as possible.
|
| Without falsifying the image, the image can often be improved by trimming
the edges, a technique known as 'cropping' the image.
|
| At the next level, Photoshop can be used improve the photograph in ways
that deliberately falsify the image. For example,
unwanted parts of the image could be removed, such as the lamppost that
appears to be growing
out of someone's head, or the unwanted 'red-eye' effect in a flash
photograph. Or the wrinkles in the face of an older person might be softened
or removed. A boring white sky could be replaced with a blue one...
|
| Photoshop can also be used to incorporate text into an image
|
| At the highest level, it is possible to be highly creative and artistic
when using Photoshop, combining images together to form montage effects or
changing colors and using special effects to give the photographs a surreal
quality. In one exercise, students are asked to convert this
photograph (© Nigel Ward)... |
...into this... (don't try to download these pictures now, for this comes
much later...)
|
|
