Photoshop 5 Bible

Photoshop 5 is a professional-level image editor that runs on a Power
Macintosh
computer or a Pentium-based PC equipped with Windows 95, 98, NT 4, or
later. By
image editor, I mean that Photoshop enables you to edit photos and artwork
scanned
to disk. You can then post the resulting images on the Internet or print
them on paper.

Here's an example: Your job is to take a picture of your company's
high-and-mighty CEO,
touch up the crow's feet, fix the hair, and publish the Chief's smiling
face on the cover of
the annual report. No problem. Just shoot the photo, have it scanned to
disk, open Mr. or
Mrs. CEO inside Photoshop, and away you go. Photoshop arms you with all the
digital
wrinkle cream, toupee relaxer, jowl remover, and tooth polisher that you
could ask for.
The head honcho looks presentable no matter how badly the company is doing.

Photoshop, then, is about changing reality. It follows in the footsteps of
a rich procession
of after-camera tools. Despite all the hand-wringing you may have heard
about the
veracity of photographs In the digital age, image editing has been around
almost as long
as photography itself. Witness the editorial image below, lifted from the
hallowed pages
of a 1917 issue of The Geographic (predecessor to National Geographic). The
men on
the left are authentic, but I'm a bit skeptical about that fellow inside
the van. Today's
editing techniques may be more sophisticated but they're hardly anything
new.