Photoshop

The Photoshop icon.

In 1990, Photoshop 1.0 was released. A digital image editing software, Photoshop allowed photographers to use computers to edit their photographs. Photoshop enabled photographers to make adjustments that would have taken much longer in a darkroom, in a few simple clicks. These edits could also be undone.

Although Photoshop, or a similar digital image editing software, has became a necessary tool for most photographers today, it has also led to huge ethics debate amongst photojournalist. Photoshop wasn’t necessarily required to manipulate images; this practice began much earlier than it’s release. For example, in the 1920s the Evening Graphic used over 20 photographs, cut and pasted together by hand, to recreate an image from a trial. In 1982, National Geographic moved the great pyramids of Giza in a photograph so that it could be used on cover. However, the invention of Photoshop made this sort of digital manipulation much easier. Now, photographers could even manipulate photographs on their computers before sending them to their editors.

Photoshop would continue to change photography from the 1990s until present. It has continued to redefine ethics of photojournalists as well as make the impossible possible with the help of digital manipulation.

Computer Arts. “The history of Photoshop.” Accessed July 17, 2011. http://www.computerarts.co.uk/in_depth/features/the_history_of_photoshop

Kobre, Kenneth, and Betsy Brill. Photojournalism: the Professionals’ Approach. Amsterdam: Focal, 2008. Print.