A lot. In a 2012 interview, “Photoshop,” the most popular, high-tech image-editing program on the planet, boasted $400m (£220m) a year in gross sales — and a job-market-boosting $10,000 (£5,200) annual salary.
The average Photoshop artist makes about $1.17m ($1.25m if married with two kids, the current median wage) and makes “a decent income,” according to the company, which is a subsidiary of Adobe.
Why do so many people want to learn the software?
In part because the field has been “anemic,” says James Deaton, who worked as a software developer for 15 years. “Most people have never done anything remotely cool with Photoshop.”
The technology “happened in a different time and environment and it didn’t work out for anyone,” says Joe Schulz, an image-editing expert and professor at the University of Southern California.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption What would a Photoshop job look like?
The main job at Photoshop is to alter photos and apply new styles to photos taken by someone else. The application of Photoshop, or retouching software, is known as vector editing, a term which relates to the technical process of building objects out of vectors.
Because retouching software can create differences based on differences in colour or shape, the process can create images that can be used in advertising, advertising copy, even to give a designer an idea of the look of their chosen image or product, experts say.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Retouching is often used to improve an image for advertising
“Retouching images is a really difficult thing with Photoshop,” says Schulz. “For every pixel you take out of a photo, it must be retouched to make its shape a bit different. The software can take a lot of time.”
The software can work even with images that are not particularly good quality, says Schulz, pointing out that when a photo is just right, the appearance may be “perfect”.
The benefits to image retouching
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Many images on offer are “perfectly-looking”
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Many retouchers have the skills to “tweak” the image to produce the appearance of a specific image
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption There is a big demand for
shutterstock contributor, can i earn money from facebook videos, can you make money doing facebook videos, how to get money on youtube videos, does reaction videos make money