The most powerful image editor money can buy
Photoshop started the digital image manipulation revolution more than 30 years ago, and Adobe’s groundbreaking application continues to be the best photo editing software money can buy (or rent, to be more precise). If you need drawing, layered image editing, a multitude of effects, and typography, you need Photoshop. It simply provides designers and photographers alike the most—and the most advanced—tools for their craft. Adobe also frequently updates Photoshop with generative AI features, innovative capabilities that simplify difficult tasks, and support for new formats. Because of its class-leading functionality, polish, and usability, Photoshop earns a rare five-star rating and our Editors’ Choice award.How Much Does Photoshop Cost?
To get Photoshop, you need a Creative Cloud subscription. Pricing can be confusing, and finding the best deal on Adobe’s site is hard. You can sign up for a Photoshop single-app plan for $22.99 per month (that’s with an annual commitment, though you make payments monthly); this includes 100GB of online storage. If you opt for month-to-month payments, this plan costs $34.49 per month. If you prepay for a full year, it’s $263.88, which works out to $21.99 per month.
But that’s not the best you can do. The Photography (20GB) plan, which goes for $9.99 per month with an annual commitment, gets you Photoshop, Lightroom (our Editors’ Choice winner for photo workflow software), and 10 Adobe Stock images. You need to hunt around the site to find that deal. When you get to the pricing page, make sure you click on the Photo section on the left side.
If you want Photoshop, Lightroom, and more online storage (1TB), you pay $19.99 per month, again with an annual commitment. A full Creative Cloud subscription, which gets you all the suite’s design, photography, and video applications, costs $59.99 per month with an annual commitment.
You no longer have the option to buy a perpetual license for Photoshop. If you don’t like the software-as-a-service model, consider Photoshop alternatives such as Corel’s surprisingly capable PaintShop Pro ($99.99), CyberLink PhotoDirector ($99.99), or even Adobe’s Photoshop Elements ($99.99 for a three-year license). If you don’t want to pay a cent, you can use the free, open-source GIMP, though doing so can be a painful, counterintuitive experience if you’re used to the convenience and polish of Photoshop.What’s New in Photoshop?
The latest features in Photoshop continue to use?Adobe’s Firefly generative artificial intelligence?and its Sensei image-analyzing AI technology. The former powers Neural Filters like Color Transfer, Landscape Mixer, and Sky Replacement. The latter comes in the form of the Generative Expand, Generative Fill, and Generate Image tools. Firefly can generate images from text prompts or based on uploaded reference images.
The Adobe Max 2024 update, version 26 of Photoshop, adds (as you might expect) even more generative AI tools. Leading the pack is the new Distraction Removal feature, an option in the program’s Remove tool. Generative Expand, Generative Fill, and Generate Background also see improvements. Now, they deliver more realistic images and better match the lighting and perspective of your source material. The update adds OpenColorIO (OCIO) support too, which is of interest to production teams who need to match colors on different displays. Support for 32-bit HDR images and improvements to Photoshop’s Camera Raw companion app (new AI features and more file support) round out the changes.
Prior to Max, the July 2024 update added an Adjustment Brush, bullets and numbering options for the Type tool, an Enhance Detail option for the AI-powered Generative Fill tool, and a Selection Brush. Some updates impacted the Camera Raw helper app, which provides the same Lens Blur tool and HDR editing and output capabilities of Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. Other impressive recent features include the AI-powered Remove Tool, Contextual Task Bar (improved in the latest update), Lightroom-like Adjustment Presets, and a smarter Gradient tool.
The?web-based version of Photoshop is getting close to parity with the desktop application. It supports generative AI features and raw camera files and even runs well on Chromebook Plus?computers. But it still lacks a few features, like Pen and Shape tools for vector paths and many filters.How to Get Started With Photoshop?
To get Photoshop, you first install the Creative Cloud desktop program. This handles installations and updates, as well as syncs your files online. It also provides news about Adobe, the Behance creative social community, and stock images. The Creative Cloud utility lets you browse and easily install Photoshop plug-ins, too. Note that it installs a ton of background processes on your system, many of which run even when you’re not using a Creative Cloud application. I counted no fewer than 11 processes in the Windows Task Manager running even when no Adobe software was ostensibly running and after I’d exited the Creative Cloud Manager app. Another annoyance is that the Creative Cloud app seems to require an update every time I open it.
Only install Photoshop on a fairly powerful PC or Mac. I tested on a Windows 11 PC sporting a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-12700K, 16GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. It requires 64-bit Windows 10 version 21H2 or later, 8MB RAM, and 4GB available disk space. It runs in Windows on Arm with the same requirements. Mac users must be running macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later with 8GB RAM and a GPU with Metal support. Apple silicon Macs can run Photoshop natively as long as they are on macOS 11.2.2 or later.
Photoshop has excellent touch input support for devices like the Microsoft Surface Pro. Adobe also maintains an almost fully functional iPad version. Not only does the program let you use touch to pan and zoom images, but it also recognizes gestures, such as a two-finger swipe to undo and a three-finger swipe to scroll through images. For painting with your finger, though, you might try Adobe’s free Fresco app, available for iPhone, iPad, Microsoft Surface Pro devices.A Surprisingly Understandable Interface
Despite the enormous number of tools inside the program, the interface is impressively user-friendly. Adobe continues to make Photoshop’s interface more customizable and helpful. You can choose between several targeted workspace layouts, including Graphic and Web, Motion, Painting, and Photography, or you can create a custom layout of panels and windows. You can also rearrange the program’s toolbar button rail to taste. A Neutral Color Mode option (thankfully) changes the bright blue Share button to a less distracting gray.
The Contextual Task Bar is a small toolbar that floats along the bottom portion of the image you’re working on and lets you perform relevant actions. The feature took me by surprise because it looks like a plug-in. But it’s helpful for opening relevant side panel entries. If you don’t like it cluttering your workspace, removing it from view is an option in the three-dot overflow menu on the right. New capabilities in the latest update include Fill, Flip, Rotate, and Stroke.
On the start screen, you see New File, Open, Home, and Learn, as well as file locations for photos you’ve uploaded through Lightroom and shared Cloud Documents. The Home icon takes you to suggested tutorials and thumbnails of your recent document. When you choose New File, you get a tabbed dialog with templates such as Instant Film Mockups, Photo Collage Layouts, and Textured Geometric Masks. Category filters across the top let you restrict the proposed templates to Art & Illustration, Film & Video, Mobile, Photo, Print, and Web. If you copy an image onto the clipboard, the software gives you the option to open a new image with its exact dimensions.
You can pick from thumbnails of your recent files and access presets and libraries from the start page. The page shows personalized tutorial content at the bottom. You can switch back to the legacy starting experience if you prefer, but I find that the start page makes it much easier to get to things I’m interested in, such as recent projects.
The helpful, ever-present Search icon at the top right lets you find Adobe Stock images, program functions, tutorials, or your images. If you already have a file open when you click the Search button, the resulting dialog becomes a detached Discover window that presents command shortcuts and help. The panel’s Home icon shows tutorial suggestions, What’s New items, the user guide, and more resources. An always-available search function in a complex desktop application is always welcome.
The interface also adapts to the purpose at hand. Take the Select and Mask workspace, for instance; it’s available whenever you have a selection tool active. It shows only the tools useful during selection, such as Brush, Hand, Lasso, Refine Edge, and Zoom, along with the relevant Properties panel. The interface’s color themes have a pleasing, context-sensitive consistency, too. If you set the window borders to be light gray, all dialogs will likewise be gray.Useful Selection Tools
One of the main uses of Photoshop is to select objects and people in photos. It’s also one of the top pain points. Photoshop still includes the venerable Lasso, Magic Wand, and Marquee, as well as the Object and Quick selection tools (with their cool Subject Select checkbox). Of note are the Selection Brush, Select on Hover option, and the Select and Mask workspace, which includes a Refine Edge option.
Photoshop’s recent Selection Brush works similarly to a regular brush for painting, complete with opacity and hardness settings. Once you select something with it, the Contextual Task Bar gives more choices, including Feather Selection, Select Border, Smooth Selection, and Transform Selection. You can also open the Select and Mask interface for more refinements. A handy use for this new tool is to use Generative Fill based on your selection. I was able to remove the furniture on the left side of the photo above.
Select on Hover gives you a nifty way to create masks. It uses Adobe’s Sensei AI technology to detect all objects in the image. As you hover over each, Photoshop highlights it for selection. Select on Hover works with the Object Selection tool, which is in the same tool button as Magic Wand and Quick Selection. Press and hold it to use it. Check the Object Finder checkbox in the options bar and the Auto Show Overlay in the gear icon’s settings. Then, move the cursor around the image to see the software shade various objects. You can tap the Show All Objects button (the square containing different-size rectangles) to show all the automatically selected objects. A related menu option, Layer > Mask All Objects, creates separate masks for all the objects Photoshop detects in a layer.
Select Subject uses AI to automatically determine and select the main object in an image. When active, a Select Subject button appears in the options bar across the top of the program windows. In testing, it did a remarkable job of selecting people when the background was relatively uniform. More complex backgrounds caused some issues, however.
Adobe continues to improve the selection of complex hair with Subject Select. Once again, the tool worked mostly well but hasn’t yet reached the holy grail of one-and-done hair selection. It failed to select some hair in my test shot and picked up some lines in the background. Even pressing the Refine Hair button and cloud processing options didn’t improve the situation much, as you can see below, leaving some of my test subject’s hair clearly visible. You can use the Select and Mask workspace tools to fix these issues. Remove Tool
While not merely a selection tool, the Remove Tool does indeed work via selection capabilities. Photoshop has long let you select and remove an object from your photos, but this is a one-step tool. My first attempts resulted in a smeared portion of the person I was trying to remove; you have to paint over the entire object rather than inside it. Overshooting the edges is fine. The tool did an impressive job of filling in the background, as you can see below.
If you want to change or remove the background in your photo, you can use Photoshop’s Remove Background quick action from the Contextual Task Bar or by typing « remove background » in the persistent search box. Since the automatic selection might be less than perfect, you could use the Select and Mask tool to get it just right.Distraction Removal
You’ve already been able to remove distractions from images in Photoshop, but now the program can find them for you automatically.
The Remove tool has a drop-down menu that identifies wires and cables or people in the image that take attention away from your subject. To be fair, Skylum Luminar deserves credit for adding a nearly identical (and very effective) AI feature two years ago in its Objects Removal section called Remove?Powerlines.
When I first tried the Find Distractions option, I got a “target layer is unsupported” message and the software told me to create a new layer. After creating a new layer, I got an “image is transparent” error message. Finally, simply selecting the background layer got me the perfect results. Interestingly, the feature doesn’t create a new layer for masking out the wires, so it’s destructive editing. In testing, it works better than the Luminar tool, even handling wires that go over complex backgrounds.
When you want to remove extraneous humans from a photo, Photoshop highlights all the people it finds in pink, and you get to use the minus brush to undo removal for those you want to keep. My test of this was tougher, with several people to remove. The result looks good at first glance, but you can see that faraway trees appear in place of a fence where I removed the man in the pink shirt (the original is in the smaller insert). A Growing Set of Firefly Generative AI Features
Photoshop now has four Firefly generative AI tools: Generate Background, Generate Image, Generative Expand, and Generative Fill. Helpful built-in tutorials teach you how to use each one. Before you do anything, you must agree to Adobe’s user guidelines.
