Adobe Photoshop delivers deep, controllable photo editing and scalable production tools for serious creative work.
Editorial score
Deep editing toolkit for retouching, removal, compositing, color work, and RAW processing.
The full desktop application is broad and complex, creating a meaningful learning curve.
Adobe Photoshop is a professional-grade editor for photographers, designers, artists, and production teams who need more than quick touch-ups. It combines extensive editing and compositing tools with masks, non-destructive layers, RAW controls, broad file support, and repeatable automation. The trade-off is complexity: it’s best for buyers ready to learn a powerful desktop application and choose a subscription that fits their storage and generative credit needs.
Adobe Photoshop is a professional image-editing and design application for photos, graphics, and art. It combines existing image work such as retouching, object removal, background editing, compositing, color adjustment, and RAW processing with powerful graphics and design tools. Desktop, web, mobile, and iPad access provide different surfaces for using the product.
Photoshop offers extensive photo-editing capabilities. The Remove tool handles unwanted objects and distractions, while Content-Aware Fill uses surrounding pixels to remove selected elements. Camera Raw adds white balance, tonal range, contrast, saturation, sharpening, and correction controls for RAW, JPEG, and TIFF files. Mobile editing covers object removal, background replacement, blending, collaging, and retouching.
Precision work centers on selections, layers, and reversible adjustments. Layer masks can reveal or conceal an adjustment using white, black, and gray paint, and Color Range includes Fuzziness for fine-tuning similar-color selections. Smart Objects and Smart Filters remain editable and maskable, while adjustment layers preserve non-destructive color and tonal refinement. Generative edits can also be confined to a selection or mask.
Photoshop supports common production formats alongside PSD and PSB, and handles large documents up to 300,000 by 300,000 pixels. Cloud documents can move between desktop, web, and mobile. For repeated work, Actions record operations for replay, and Image Processor can batch-convert and resize folders, create JPEG, PSD, or TIFF output, convert to sRGB, embed profiles, add metadata, and run an action.
Photoshop is a strong choice for photographers, designers, digital artists, content creators, and production teams that need deep editing control, RAW support, compositing, automation, or broad file compatibility. Its free mobile entry point may suit lighter use, but the complete desktop application is a professional-grade toolset with a meaningful learning curve. Buyers should also match their storage and generative-credit needs to the subscription they choose.
Where the product fits — and where to be careful
Strong fit
Strong fit
Photoshop has exceptional editing depth across retouching, removal, compositing, color and tone work, Camera Raw processing, and selection-based generative changes.
Broad format handling, large-file support, cross-surface cloud documents, Actions, batch processing, droplets, and Image Processor provide strong production workflow coverage.
Layer masks, Color Range tuning, object masks, editable Smart Objects and Smart Filters, adjustment layers, and mask-bounded generative edits provide exceptional precision and reversible refinement.
User feedback is mixed: ease of use has both favorable and unfavorable mentions, while onboarding is consistently difficult and value for money is mixed.
Category scores use the linked comparison rubric and can differ from a product’s overall review score.
| Product | Category score | Best for | Key tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| | 4.3/5 | Photographers, designers, digital artists, and creative teams that need advanced, reversible control over detailed image edits and production workflows. | Its expansive desktop toolset has a meaningful learning curve. |
| | 4.0/5 | Photographers who want fast AI enhancement and creative relighting alongside capable masking, RAW editing, and desktop-level control. | Several AI tools, including Crop AI, Erase, Upscale, and Background Removal AI, cannot be synced through batch adjustments. |
| | 3.8/5 | Sellers, marketers, Shopify merchants, and social-commerce teams that need fast, consistent product images at scale. | RAW is not listed, TIFF support is not established, and catalog layers can merge when leaving the editor or publishing to Shopify. |
| | 4.0/5 | Non-designers, marketers, social teams, and business users creating posts, presentations, and on-brand assets in one workspace. | AI use is governed by shared monthly allowances, variable complexity-based consumption, rate limits, and possible pauses. |
Based on 27 public customer reviews. Source mix: 17 from softwareadvice.com, and 10 from trustradius.com.
Customer sentiment is analyzed separately and does not determine the Reviews.vc editorial score.
| Theme and finding | Mentions | Positive | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|
Editing quality Buyers consistently view Photoshop as a professional, versatile editor that produces high-quality results across photo retouching, graphics, and image manipulation. | 18 | 18 | 1 |
Edit control The tool offers extensive creative control for detailed edits, including object removal, background work, retouching, and compositing, though layers and some selection tools can be confusing. | 11 | 8 | 4 |
Ease of use Common editing and export tasks can be efficient once learned, but the interface, evolving features, and inconsistent shortcuts make the product less intuitive for some users. | 10 | 6 | 6 |
Onboarding New users should expect a meaningful learning curve and may need tutorials or hands-on experience before they can use Photoshop’s full feature set confidently. | 9 | 0 | 9 |
Value for money Many see strong value for professional use and Adobe-suite integration, but subscription pricing can be hard to justify for occasional users or buyers with limited budgets. | 8 | 4 | 6 |
Mentions count unique reviews. One review can count as both positive and negative for the same theme when it describes a mixed experience.
This analysis reflects public customer reviews we could identify and access at the time of collection; the displayed source mix may influence the patterns shown.
| Period | n | Positive | Mixed | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 H2Limited sample | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2026 H1 | 7 | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| 2026 H2Limited sample | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Only periods containing dated reviews are shown; gaps between labels mean no dated reviews were available for those periods.
Photoshop is sold as a Creative Cloud subscription, with a seven-day trial. Annual plans renew automatically, and cancellation and refund terms depend on timing.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
Photoshop | US$22.99 per month | Photoshop standalone plan with 100GB storage and 25 monthly generative credits; annual commitment billed monthly. |
Photography plan | US$19.99 per month | Includes Photoshop, Lightroom, 1TB storage, and 1,000 monthly generative credits; annual commitment billed monthly. |
Photoshop annual prepaid | US$263.88 per year | Photoshop standalone plan with annual prepaid billing. |
Documented connections and access methods for Adobe Photoshop.
Recent product and company updates
New Photoshop innovations bring more choice and control
Adobe introduced expanded partner-model support in Generative Fill, plus Rotate Object, Harmonize, Generative Upscale, and further creative-control updates.
SourceShowing 10 of 26 sources · 16 additional sources analyzed
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