Adobe Photoshop is the graphic arts industry standard software for raster image manipulation. Cartographers can also use Photoshop to create effective colored shaded relief for maps.

One important advantage in using Photoshop to create shaded relief is that of familiarity. Most cartographers and graphic artists have Photoshop on their desktop and are skilled in using it for working with images. It is an extremely powerful image-editing tool and a skilled cartographer can make many enhancements to a shaded relief map image once it is rendered.
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