Top 18 Pros and Cons of Photoshop CC 2022 (2024)

Photoshop: Advantages

I divided them into several separate groups and looked into them individually.

1. Advanced Features for Photographers

You get full control of the photograph you work with. From the moment you upload it and start working till the final touches you add.

You can whiten teeth, straighten hair, remove a small wrinkle or blemish, perhaps a mole you don’t like or freckles; you can also improve the eyes and make the skin tone even. These are just some of the features you can do with Adobe Photoshop.

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There are dozens of tested and effective techniques, like Spot Healing, Frequency Separation, Dodge & Burn, etc.

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Frequency Separation is necessary for correcting skin imperfections. Dodge & Burn has an underlying principle of increasing or decreasing the exposure in certain parts of the image to boost the depth of colors, increase volume, get rid of small imperfections and uneven skin pigmentation.

2. Capable of Performing Professional Color Grading

Photoshop CC has a Camera RAW plug-in. It is a bit like a reduced and simplified version of Lightroom CC. Camera RAW allows you to edit practically all popular RAW file formats and also supports TIFFs and JPEGs.

The tools include some of the familiar options, like curves, saturation, HSL, exposure, etc. But you also have the possibility to add some professional plug-ins.

One of the biggest advantages of Camera RAW is the non-destructive photo editing, which keeps the original image intact.

3. Advanced Layers

Photoshop has many types of layers: type layer, image layer, vector shape layer, layer styles, smart object, smart filter, layer mask, adjustment layer, and background.

With their help you can do a variety of manipulations, e.g. you add some text with a Type Layer, add shadows or other effects with Adjustment Layer, etc. With the help of Layer Mask, you can apply changes to a separate part of the image, e.g. you can make the sky gradient.

You can use image layers to create complex combinations from two or more images, mixed with Mask Layers and blend modes. Moreover, each layer can be edited separately.

• Read more about how to mask in Photoshop.

4. Useful Plug-Ins, Filters, Textures, Overlays, Actions

With plug-ins, you can add special effects or interesting features, make work on the projects easier and more efficient. You can get actions, various brushes, overlays, fonts, and textures. If you are new to Photoshop, then actions are a great way to get a quality picture with minimum effort.

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You can find hundreds of extensions and plug-ins at Adobe Add-ons website. They were all created by developers and professional designers. You can download different text styles, brushes, actions, and gradients to make the image editing process more automated and easy.

5. Merging Pictures

One of the most important advantages of Photoshop CC is its ability to use several images to create original combinations. With Auto-Blend Layers tool, you can add soft transitions to your image.

You can add texture or replace the background, mix several images into one and have different areas in focus to get a better depth of field.

Similarly, you can create a combined image by mixing several images with different levels of lighting. In addition to combining images, you can also stitch them together to get a panoramic picture.

I should mention that the Auto-Blend Layers tool will only be available for photos in RGB or grayscale. You cannot use it when you work with smart objects, video layers, 3D-layers, and backgrounds.

6. Full Support of Drawing Tablets

This is one of the unquestionable benefits of Photoshop for beginner and professional artists and retouchers alike. The tablet not only makes the work faster, but it also gives you better control of the brush.

When you work with a mouse, you can only take the cursor and move the tool in one or the other direction, however, the pressure of this tool on the clay surface, for example, will be constant, and the mouse button will work as an on/off button.

If you have a drawing tablet, however, its pen will allow you not only to move the brush on the surface but also control the pressure with which you work. It will make your work as a sculptor more efficient and accurate.

The larger the scale of your pen’s sensitivity is, the smoother the pressure on the surface will be. My favorite tablet for Photoshop is Wacom Intuos Pro Medium.

• Check out more tablets for photo editing.

7. Active Community of +1000000 Users

More than 80% of professional retouchers, designers, web-developers, and artists use Adobe Photoshop, so you can find an abundance of tutorials, courses, active forums, and blogs on various sites.

8. Professional Graphics

Photoshop is amazing for a lot of design projects. These can be book covers, leaflets, and brochures, promotional stuff, etc. Plenty of tools that Photoshop offers can help anyone find their artistic voice.

If you need Photoshop for web design, it will help you with that for sure. You can create beautiful landing pages, sales funnel, logos, icons, etc.

You can even use it to design newsletters for your clients. There are really no limits to what you can do with this software when it concerns graphics.

9. Many Design Tools

Among some of the more helpful features, I would like to mention the possibility to choose different templates from Adobe Stock. These templates include stock resources and illustrations that you can use to create your own unique projects.

Besides, you can use different Photoshop menu styles or set your own sizes. You can also save your styles and re-use them for future projects.

If you are a web designer, consider studying Artboards, which are optimized for RGB color mode and advanced rendering mode with a graphics processor.

This plug-in simplifies the development process, giving you an unlimited number of canvases, on which you can lay out various designs for different devices and screens.

An Artboard looks like a special type of layer groups. Visually they work as separate canvases in a single document.

10. Video Clips and Animation Layers

Apart from image enhancement, Adobe Photoshop also offers a function of convenient video and animation editing. You may work with separate frames or animation layers.

One of the key Photoshop advantages is that while editing videos, you use the tools, which are already familiar to you. I mean all the tools that you typically use while fixing photos ‒ from Curves and Levels, such as Gaussian Blur and Unsharp Mask.

You may edit the size using Free transform, write the text, adjust animation effects, add transitions that result in a professional fading and darkening effects, apply filters between the clips and correct audio tracks, etc.

11. Integrated Image Library

If you tend to spend hours looking for some great pictures on the net, you’d better devote your time to something more pleasant and useful. Ps offers you an integrated library that will be particularly handy.

It is really helpful while creating images or videos. Moreover, these libraries are synchronized through the app, thus facilitating the working process.

12. It Is Easy to Move Files from One Program to Another

One more thing that belongs to the advantages of Photoshop is that users can send images from one program to another. The process is realized through the Creative Suite, which doesn’t affect the image quality.

13. Cloud Storage

It is very convenient to use cloud storage since you may sync and get access to the necessary files from various PCs being in different cities and countries.

For example, if you are a professional retoucher and you were invited to the office in another city, it isn’t necessary to take your laptop with you. You may log into your account using any other computer and continue working.

Adobe offers many subscription plans, starting with 20GB to 10TB. There are Creative Cloud and Photography Plans. These two plans differ in the amount of storage: if you pay $9.99 a month, you get 20GB; for 1B you have to pay $19.99/month.

• Find out how to get Adobe Creative Cloud for Free and use up to 2TB.

14. OpenType SVG Fonts and Emoji Support

Speaking about the benefits of Photoshop, I can’t but mention that Ps supports Open Type SVG fonts, integrated color Trajan scheme, and Emoji. Open Type SVG fonts allow using several colors and gradients in one glyph.

Note: although letters of OpenType SVG fonts may be keyed using the keyboard, the full set of the majority of fonts is available on the glyph panel.

For instance, Trajan color scheme has 20 various stylistic sets for each symbol, such as silver, copper, steel-blue, marble, and you may get access to them only on the glyph panel.

Photoshop: Disadvantages

I won’t mention basic Photoshop limitations, for example, that if you want to get qualitative results you need good hardware, no, it’s too obvious. These days almost everyone has a modern laptop or a PC.

15. Complicated Learning Curve

Together with all its functions, Photoshop is quite a difficult program to master. Even experienced users sometimes have problems since Ps contains features and tools for image retouching, design, animation, 3-D graphics and even video editing.

Besides, it gets stable upgrades and, namely, innovations.

Consequently, the learning curve is more complicated than any other program for creatives has. You should spend much time on mastering all tools to understand how they work during picture editing.

16. Not Suitable for Batch Work with Photos

Although we may name many advantages of Photoshop, it is not the best variant for those who work with hundreds of images every day. This program is developed to edit separate pictures.

It is troublesome to open many photos and then edit each of them individually. However, some batch picture editing options are still available.

If you go to the File Automation menu, you can find the Batch Editing item. Actually, this mode works rather poorly and you may use only previously saved actions.

17. It Isn’t Cheap

Photoshop is a part of the Creative Cloud family, so you may get access to it only paying a monthly subscription. $9.99 a month is not much if Ps brings you profit. If it isn’t your case, such a price may become a problem for you.

• Find out more about the existing ways to buy Photoshop.

18. Incomplete Updates or Untested Beta Versions

The fact that there are no annual updates is one of serious Adobe Photoshop disadvantages. Now users get regular updates at particular intervals. As a result, errors occur more often.

Although they are not annoying and may be quickly fixed with the help of Adobe Support Team, sometimes they happen at the worst possible time. For example, when you are nervously trying to meet the deadline.

Bonus Freebies for Photoshop

No matter whether you are an amateur or a skillful pro, these plug-ins will come in handy.

Vignette + Clear Colors

This Instagram action is a universal tool since it is suitable for various photo genres. It adds some deepness and intensity to the image highlighting the main object.

Matte Feel

Apply this Matte Ps action to make your image lighter, add natural lighting and airy mood, boost contrast but preserve a natural look. It is suitable for various photos, outdoor as well as indoor ones. As a result, you will get great pictures no matter what the main subject is.

Fix Red

This action will help you enhance the baby’s skin making it more gentle and natural. It will also remove the redness and other imperfections from the face.

Fall Leaves

Add magic effects using this Leaves Ps overlay. It is the only tool that you need if you want to show the beauty of the autumn season in your landscape or portrait shots.

Magical Fog

Add some smoke and slight fog to your pictures with a landscape background. Light, semitransparent fog will give your shots a special allure.