Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. Photoshop was created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, it has become the de facto industry standard in raster graphics editing, to the point that Photoshop has become a generic trademark leading to its use as a verb such as “to Photoshop an image”, “photoshopping” and “Photoshop contest”, though Adobe discourages such use.
Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing, and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, and duotone. Photoshop uses its own PSD and PSB file formats to support these features.
In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop has limited abilities to edit or render text, vector graphics (especially through clipping path), 3D graphics and video. Its feature set can be expanded by plug-ins; programs developed and distributed independently of Photoshop that can run inside it and offer new or enhanced features.
Photoshop’s naming scheme was initially based on version numbers. However, in October 2002 (following the introduction of Creative Suite branding), each new version of Photoshop was designated with “CS” plus a number; e.g., the eighth major version of Photoshop was Photoshop CS and the ninth was Photoshop CS2. In June 2013, with the introduction of Creative Cloud branding, Photoshop’s licensing scheme was changed to that of software as a service rental model and the CS suffixes were replaced with CC.
As of November 2019 , the latest major release of Photoshop for Macintosh is Photoshop CC 2019 20.0.8; for Windows it is Photoshop CC 2019 20.6.
The best way to use Adobe Photoshop for free is to download the free trial from Adobe’s website. This will give you full access to all of the features of the software for 7 days. After that, you can either purchase a subscription or continue using the software with reduced functionality.
