
Using Illustrator, you can create images like this one: Credit: webpixels.io It’s been used across the globe ever since, for everything from graphic design to cartooning and digital painting. Illustrator is a vector-based software, released by Adobe one year after Photoshop-1988. Photoshop is available as standalone software ($20.99/month with unlimited cloud storage), in a “Photography Package” ($9.99/month, comes with Lightroom but only 20GB of storage), or as part of the full Adobe Creative Cloud ($52.99/month, comes with every existing Adobe software). However, even a few hours of playing around with the program can glean some very valuable knowledge. Of course, becoming an expert in Photoshop takes a lot longer. All you need to do is import a photo, learn how to edit it using a few tools, and you can create images that look polished and ready for the web in no time.

The basics of Photoshop are pretty simple. Photoshop has been Adobe’s flagship program since its inception, and no other software has been able to dethrone it. Photoshop is used in a variety of different industries and applications, but its main purpose remains the same: manipulating, adjusting, and improving images with different overlays, effects, and brushes. It’s so powerful that the word “photoshopped” is now a globally-used slang that describes things that look fake or are “too good to be true”. Over the last 30-ish years, Photoshop has enjoyed its place at the top of the photo editing and graphic design world. According to one site, it’s the seventh most influential computer program of all time. Photoshop, originally released in 1987, is one of the world’s most popular programs.

