Life after Photoshop

Photo-editing A-Z

Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash

This is a list of definitions of photo editing terms, with links to articles that include them.

A B C D E F H L N O P R S T V

A

  • ACDSee (2)ACDSee is a photo editing software company best known for its flagship product, ACDSee Photo Studio, but which also publishes a photo editor called Gemstone. ACDSee focuses on Windows software but does produce a Mac version of ACDSee Photo Studio. • ACDSee website
  • Adobe (6)Giant software company that dominates the creative software industry. Adobe publishes not just Photoshop and Lightroom, but Premiere Pro and After Effects video editing software, InDesign page layout and Illustrator vector drawing software and a whole lot more as part of its Creative Cloud ecosystem.
  • Adobe Camera Raw (2)Software that works alongside Adobe Photoshop to open and process RAW files before they open in Photoshop itself. Adobe Camera Raw’s tools are also built into Adobe Lightroom. Most people use Adobe Camera Raw to process their RAW files simply because they’re using Photoshop or Lightroom, but other RAW converters are available.
  • Affinity Photo (3)For a long time Adobe Photoshop has been the only real professional level image-editing program, but software company Serif has launched a professional photo editing program which competes directly with Photoshop at a much lower price – and for a single payment rather than the software subscription system introduced by Adobe. Affinity Photo has been built from the ground up for speed and performance and compatibility with the Photoshop PSD file format.
  • Analog Efex (11)Analog Efex Pro is part of the DxO Nik Collection. It recreates the look of old films, darkroom processes and vintage cameras by combining image adjustments and filter effects as presets which you can apply with a single click or customise yourself.
  • Aperture (Apple) (3)Now discontinued, Aperture was Apple's Mac-only professional photo organising, processing and non-destructive editing program. It was a direct rival to Lightroom, but while it had far more sophisticated and effective image organising tools, it fell behind for editing tools and was eventually abandoned.
  • Aurora HDR (7)HDR software developed in conjunction with HDR specialist Trey Ratcliff. Aurora HDR can work with single images or merge a series of bracketed exposures. You can apply one of many different preset effects or create your own with the manual controls.