What Is Adobe Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop is a bitmap computer graphic arts program, and while other such programs, like Corel's PaintBrush package, will do very much the same thing and have comparative tools, Adobe's Photoshop is the standard in the graphic arts industry. Programs like Photoshop are a godsend to graphic artists because of the ease with which images can be developed, changed and enhanced. At the same time these programs can take a leap of faith, and be a hard, cold, frustrating struggle, as well as seem like a phony world to a normal visual artist who is used to real paints, paintbrushes, and textures. That is why I've included two vastly different examples of computer graphic art in this web site, as well as examples from other graphic programs such as this picture, "Grey Mountain." I believe I did this in CorelDRAW 8.

The banner at the top of this page and the hyperlink "image map" on the left side are examples of simple computer graphics done via a graphic arts program. A box is drawn and a fill tool is used to load it with a chosen color. A gradient tool is used to cause the color to fade from one side to the other. A circle or oval is drawn over the rectangle, filled with another complementary color, and some form of text is inserted, sized, colored and given a distinctive font. As a graphic artist, I still spent a good amount of time on these images, altering the design until they had a look and feel I was satisfied with.