The meaning of Photoshop
Photoshop is:
- One of the most popular programs in the world.
- A flexible tool for visual solutions is such spheres as art, design, advertising, fashion, construction, architecture, animation, astronomy, science and publishing among others.
- An valuable skill for a variety of professionals.
- A way of self-expression for professional and amateur artists and designers.
- An invention that has changed our history, society and culture forever.
In the contemporary world, everyone loves and uses Photoshop. Photography and graphic design play an important role in the life of the modern society. Photography an Photoshop are the parts of a variety of fields and industries today. For example, Photoshop is a moving force of fashion and advertising, it dictates and reflects cultural and social trends and tendencies. Besides, it is used in science. It helps the astronomers to re-crate the images of space objects, it also allows the medical professionals to have a better idea of the mechanisms of a human body. Overall, Photoshop has penetrated almost every sphere of life of the modern people and facilitated very significant changes.
History of Photoshop
- Invented by Thomas and John Knoll.
- The first beta version of the program was called ImagePro and appeared in 1988 (Story par. 11). It was developed from an earlier application called Display.
- The Knoll brothers presented their application to Adobe and the history of Photoshop started. After Adobe signed their contract with the Knoll brothers, a huge number of developers began to work on the improvement of Photoshop.
- In 1990 the first version of Photoshop became available to the users (Story par. 17).
- One basic photo retouching through the first version of Photoshop cost about 300 dollars (A Quick History of Adobe Photoshop & Cool Facts Behind the Living Legend par. 5).
Ever since it was first invented in 1988, Photoshop became a legend and a starting point for the development of all the other graphic editing computer programs and applications. They layout of Photoshop is the basis for all the following editing programs. This way, Photoshop can be called the standard for image processing. Thomas and John Knoll have inherited their father’s love for photography and interest towards technologies. Their invention is massively popular and widely used today. It carried both positive and negative impacts on the modern society.
Opportunities Photoshop Provides
- Images can be used in various fields to demonstrate different processes (aging, construction, medical changes, natural processes.
- A photograph of a person allows altering their appearance (change body shape, colour of eyes, clothes, hair).
- Basically, any landscape, or object in the picture can be changed in an unlimited number of ways.
Main sphere affected by Photoshop, is art and design. Yet, it also offers a wide range of opportunities for visual communication through images. A number of social advertisements today do not have ay slogans or words at all, Photoshop allows them to be very eloquent and persuasive without making a verbal statement.
Positive Impact
- Photoshop has changed our approach to image processing and photography in general (no more darkrooms in the basement).
- The speed of photo-editing has increased rapidly, what took days and hours before how takes seconds.
- Photoshop provides wide opportunities for creativity.
- Image now is a flexible means that can be altered in a variety of ways.
- It created a new profession called graphic designer.
- It added a verb to our language (“to photoshop” means to edit an image).
- The whole world became more visual and people’s way of thinking changed developing a better ability to understand and process images.
Photoshop increased the importance of photography in our world. As images became digital and flexible, they quickly took their places in a variety of industries. As a result, nothing is impossible today, any idea can be re-created as a digital image which changes the ay we see the world. Besides, photography now is an important part of business as it is the basis of advertising.
Negative Impact
- Photoshop has changed the way humans view themselves offering unrealistically flawless photographs of people.
- Photoshop destroyed reliability of photographs, now they are not considered as a reliable evidence of anything because they can be easily changed.
- Some photographers believe that Photoshop has made the art of photography soulless and commercial because it is now available for everyone.
Photoshop and airbrushing used in fashion magazines and advertising presently facilitate high levels of distress in the society presenting perfect looking people. As a result, such issues as anorexia, bulimia, and depression become more frequent. Due to Photoshop images became more informative and creative but lost their validity and reliability presenting distorted reality. Some photographers still use darkrooms as they believe that old-fashioned methods of editing are more authentic and genuine.
Conclusion
- Photoshop has been introduced less than three decades ago.
- It has affected such industries as business, fashion, art, and science.
- It completely changed the popularity, meaning and potential of an image in our lives.
Humans are visual creatures, they require demonstrations as proofs of processes and happenings. Abstract thinking has always been very confusing. Photoshop is the tool the can put any abstract idea into life and provide a demonstration. This feature of Photoshop served as a leap for our society and its development, but also left some negative outcomes.
Works Cited
A Quick History of Adobe Photoshop & Cool Facts Behind the Living Legend. 1stwebesigner. 2015. Web.
Story, Derrick. From Darkroom to Desktop—How Photoshop Came to Light. 2000. Web.