It is easy to see why Photoshop is considered to be the premier image-editing software available today. The Photoshop program contains exceptionally sophisticated effects that in the past would have taken a great deal of time and effort to achieve and condenses the steps to reach these effects to only a few simple clicks.

Photoshop does come with a price tag that some may consider high, especially when there are freeware editors available, but with the wide expanse of features it offers, it is considered a vital program for anyone working with any graphics medium from print to the web and even to movies and television.

This has resulted in the vast number of less expensive competitors (although none are really considered to be contenders), plus the piracy of the Photoshop software itself. In measures to counter this, a simplified version of Photoshop known as Photoshop Elements was introduced which has proven to be a perfect tool for beginners.

How did Photoshop get into this dominant position? Well, development started in 1987, with the first release in 1990. Since then, Adobe has been improving the software continuously, constantly taking advantage of advances in hardware power. Even now, to get the best performance out of Photoshop, you should buy as much RAM as you can afford.

It is not just Adobe's efforts that have got Photoshop where it is today, however. The program's plugin architecture has allowed there to be are all sorts of plugins available for more advanced work, including some plugins that actually cost more and do more than the program itself.

In this manner, Photoshop is frequently used in the same aspect as Windows as a springboard. It would be a tremendous endeavor to get these plugins to run with any other software, making competitors essentially ineffective to those using a plugin.

Photoshop for Windows and Mac OS (both OS 9 and OS X) are available today. For those wanting to use it on Linux, you will have to use Crossover Office, Codeweavers' program that permits some Windows software to operate on Linux, but it will be quite slow.

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