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The History of Photoshop
Thomas and John Knoll created Photoshop in 1988 with the release of Photoshop 1.0 following in February 1990. It is a raster graphics editor and has become the predominant industry standard for digital image editing.
At its heart, it has a suite of tools that allow the user to edit, assemble and compose images using multiple layers and masks. It is this use of layers and masks that are the core features of Photoshop's power. Such layer-based editing means you can build very complex images and create incredible works of art using this method.
Photoshop's Strengths
Photoshop is a pixel-level editor. Where Lightroom allows you to adjust pixels in an image, Photoshop lets you move them and manipulate them in a way that's nothing short of magical.
Photoshop allows multiple layers to be applied to an image. You can keep images and edits on separate layers and modify them accordingly and independently. This is the basis of non-destructive editing.
It's huge. Mind-bogglingly huge. The toolbox alone is the stuff of legend and contains everything the professional designer and photographer would ever need from a piece of software.
You can record specific actions within Photoshop, allowing you to apply those actions to other images with a click of a button.
You're able to blend many different layers together, masking areas of an image to protect it from being edited, even down to the pixel level.
Almost anything is possible in Photoshop. If you can imagine a scene, then you're able to turn your wedding photos into a dramatic space battle or have a picture of the kids playing with a T-Rex. Remove objects, add objects, touch up skin tones, the list goes on and on.