Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop Review: The Image Editing Standard After 35 Years

Adobe Photoshop has defined image editing since its 1990 release. In the decades since, it has evolved from a darkroom digitisation tool into the most comprehensive image manipulation platform available — and despite competitive pressure from Affinity Photo, Pixelmator Pro, and GIMP, it remains the unchallenged industry standard for professional image work.

Why Photoshop Remains the Standard

The depth of Photoshop's toolset is the primary reason professionals do not leave despite viable alternatives. The layer compositing system — blending modes, adjustment layers, smart objects, clipping masks, layer groups — enables complex non-destructive editing workflows that preserve the original image data throughout the editing process. Smart Object support allows embedded vector graphics and placed images to be scaled without quality loss. Adjustment layers apply colour grading, curves, and levels non-destructively with mask control at the individual layer level.

For photographers, the Camera Raw integration — now available as a full-featured standalone filter on any layer — provides professional-grade RAW processing within the Photoshop workflow. The Lightroom-to-Photoshop pipeline (passing an image from Lightroom directly into Photoshop as a Smart Object) is the standard professional photography retouching workflow.

AI-Powered Features

Generative Fill, powered by Adobe Firefly, is the most significant Photoshop feature addition in a decade. Select any region of an image, press Shift+Delete, enter a text prompt, and Photoshop generates photorealistic fill content that matches the lighting, perspective, and style of the surrounding image. Content-Aware removal — extending a background, removing a person from a scene, filling a gap in a landscape — that previously required significant masking and cloning skill now takes seconds.

The Remove tool (AI-powered blemish and object removal), Neural Filters (portrait smoothing, depth blur, style transfer), and Sky Replacement (automatic sky detection and photorealistic sky swapping) represent a sustained AI integration effort that accelerates professional workflows rather than replacing them.

Selection Tools

Photoshop's selection capabilities are the deepest in the category. Select Subject uses AI to detect and mask the primary subject in a single click, with accuracy that manual lasso tools cannot approach in the same time. Select and Mask provides refinement controls for hair, fur, and fine edge details. Colour Range selection targets by hue, saturation, and luminance. The resulting selection precision enables product photography cutouts, complex compositing, and precise targeted adjustments that competing tools struggle to match.

The Subscription Problem

The primary objection to Photoshop in professional communities is the subscription model. At $22.99/month for the standalone app (or $59.99/month for the full Creative Cloud suite), Photoshop has no outright purchase option. After three years, a user has paid $828 and owns nothing. Affinity Photo's $69.99 one-time purchase represents a compelling alternative value proposition for photographers and designers who do not require Photoshop specifically.

For organisations, Creative Cloud for Teams pricing ($89.99/user/month for all apps) includes asset storage, shared libraries, and admin controls — making it a more complex cost-benefit calculation than the individual tier.

Learning Curve

Photoshop's learning curve is real. The interface has more panels, tools, and keyboard shortcuts than any other design application. Beginners who open Photoshop for the first time face an overwhelming environment. Structured learning — through Adobe's own tutorials, Udemy, or professional courses — is typically necessary before productive use. The ceiling, however, is unlimited: professionals with 20 years of Photoshop experience still discover capabilities they have not explored.

Verdict

For professional image work — photography retouching, digital art, advertising design, and visual effects — Photoshop's depth and ecosystem integration are unmatched. The subscription cost and learning curve are the honest trade-offs.

Score: 9.0/10 — Unmatched depth and professional ecosystem; subscription cost and complexity are the trade-offs.