With the latest advancements in technology, designing and art have changed a lot, making our work easier. The software has become synonymous with digital art, so much so that many professional photographers and graphic designers rely entirely on the software for their work. However, the usage of the software is not limited to professionals of digital art alone. It extends to common people editing their pictures for personal use and presentations in their workplace and students making projects and assignments as part of their academic curriculum.
This is why so many teachers and parents feel that students need to learn Photoshop as an integral component of their children’s extracurricular and computational education. Many schools teach Photoshop’s basic features and their uses to students as part of the subject Computer Application. Yet many other students enrol in online or offline crash courses to learn how to use Photoshop. No matter what method you choose to learn the software, you can come across some problems and doubts since it is a complex software to understand and use it efficiently.
The most common problem that students learn using the software face is making a rectangle transparent in Photoshop. In this web page, we have attempted to answer this question by providing the necessary inputs required to tackle the problem. However, before we solve it, let us delve into the history and origins of Photoshop to learn more about the software and how it came to be such an indispensable tool.
Introduction
While people address it as software, Photoshop did not start as one. Officially known as
Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop is a raster graphics editor that is developed, licensed, and published by Adobe Inc. The software can be used on both the operating systems, Windows and Mac, among others. Thomas and John Knoll initially developed the software in 1988, and is the most popular, trusted, and widely used platform for editing and designing digital art.
Photoshop owes its massively immense popularity to its ability to compose and edit all sorts of images in multiple layers and its employment of technical and sought after features like supports masks, alpha compositing, and colour models. These colour models further include some of the best models available today, like RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot colour, and duotone. Moreover, the software uses its file formats like PSD and PSB that make such complex features easy and reliable.
However, Photoshop’s reliability is not limited to just images. The software is more often than not used to edit text, vector graphics, 3D graphics, and videos through features that are available on the software and can be expanded through the usage of plug-ins.
How it Started: History of Photoshop
The history of Photoshop is not an incredibly old one; it is relatively new. The software was originally designed by the brothers Thomas and John Knoll in 1987, and a year later, in 1988, they sold it to Adobe Systems Incorporated. The first program of the software was written by Thomas Knoll when he was a PhD student at the University of Michigan to display grayscale images on a monochrome display on his Macintosh Plus. This early and primitive version of the software was known as Display, and Thomas was encouraged by his brother John, who was working with Industrial Light & Magic to develop the program further. The two brothers then worked tirelessly for six months to turn the nascent program into something that would attract buyers’ attention. Once they were successful in their endeavour, they renamed the program Photoshop and began selling it through the Barneyscan, succeeding in selling a total of 200 copies.
The brothers then presented their program jointly to Apple and Adobe at Silicon Valley, and Adobe purchased it in 1988. Adobe released the first version of the program early next year under the name Photoshop 1.0.
Since then, Adobe has been developing and upgrading the software program and its code and has been launching the newest version of the same under different version names. A significant reason for the software’s success was its accessibility and lower cost. It significantly reduced the number of money creators of digital art had to spend to edit and refine their work.
While the software was initially developed and released only for Macintosh, by 1993, versions of it were also available for Microsoft Windows. It further boosted the software’s popularity since Microsoft Windows became the most popular and widely used operating system in the years to come.
Versions of Photoshop:
Adobe has released several versions of the Photoshop software since the first version was marketed thirty years ago. Each version is given a number that can recognise it. Since 2002, each version is also designated with the acronym CS that stands for Creative Suite. Therefore, the earlier CS versions of Photoshop were titled Photoshop CS, Photoshop CS2, Photoshop CS3, and so on until Photoshop CS6. Some of these versions were also further categorised as Standard or Extended. In 2013, the acronym was changed to CC that stood for Creative Cloud when the program began to be licensed as a service rental model software.
Along with Photoshop, Adobe also releases other software that is marketed under the names.
Adobe Bridge, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Device Central, and Adobe ImageReady. Other software licensed by Adobe as part of the Adobe Photoshop Family includes Photoshop Express, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Mix, Photoshop Fix, Photoshop Sketch, and Photoshop Lightroom.
Tools of Photoshop:
Adobe Photoshop includes unlimited tools that have revolutionised the way digital arts are approached and presented by artists worldwide. These tools are very popular as they help rework on mistakes without having to restart the art piece; this is the biggest advantage over physical art. While the software includes many professional tools that will not all be within the scope of use of school students, here some basic tools that students should remember if they wish to be introduced to Photoshop, they are as follows:
- Pen tool
- Clone stamp tool
- Shape tools
- Measuring and navigation
- Selection tools
- Cropping
- Slicing
- Moving
- Marquee
- Lasso
- Magic wand
- Eraser
Reach and Impact of Photoshop:
As stated earlier, several times in this article, Photoshop’s reach and impact are beyond imagination; no other art form has reached such great heights in a short span. Derivative verbs such as Photoshopped have been born out of the widespread use of the software and have become a part of the modern, urban vocabulary in the art world and even outside of it. Even when a different software has edited the image, the verb is used to refer to the process of editing the image in the first place. Other verbs that have become a part of Photoshop’s phenomenon include photoshopping, photoshop a photo, and photoshop contest. Photoshop has created huge impacts in many fields; you can take a look at this list.
- Art
- Advertising
- Films
- Education
- Marketing
- Daily use, etc.
Naturally, Adobe discourages such generalisation from preventing the software’s trademark, but pop culture has already reached a place beyond such intervention.
How to Make a Rectangle Transparent in Photoshop
The function of making a rectangle or any shape transparent in Photoshop is a popular one for professional artists aiming to achieve a particular effect in their art. Making a rectangle transparent can help you create depth and layers for any artwork; it can also help you try out different colours or templates to see how it looks. Here are the steps through which this can be achieved:
- Draw a normal rectangle
- Go to Window > Layers
- Find a layer for your shape and right-click on the layer.
- Select the Blending Options
- On the layers menu, select the Fill option.
- Click on Flyout
- Go to percentage and reduce it by 0 per cent.
- You will see that the fill becomes transparent.
Wrapping Up
We hope this article helped introduce the history and key features of Adobe Photoshop to you. For more Measurement formulas and Examples, check out Cuemath. Let us know in the comment if you attempt to make your shapes transparent on Photoshop and how the effect turns out to be. You can always explore more, and we guarantee you would be fascinated by this marvellous software, do give it a try and let us know.