Photoshop Turns 20

Photoshop was conceived by the brothers, Thomas (a student) and John Knoll (an Industrial Light and Magic employee) in 1987 as part of a PhD thesis at the University of Michigan examining the processing of digital images. The first workable version of their project was named ImagePro (1988), before assuming the now ubiquitous title of Photoshop in 1989. Its humble commercial origins can be traced back to Barneyscan, a scanner manufacturer, which bundled the first 200 copies of Photoshop with one of their slide scanners. Adobe’s interest and subsequent purchase of the Knoll brothers’ dainty image editor resulted in the first incarnation of the application being released on the 10th of February 1990, a whole two decades ago.

Photoshop has grown into a colossus in the image editing landscape, cutting a swath through the many pretenders to the throne. Its native file format, the .PSD has become immortal; and the word “Photoshop” has entered the lexicon of contemporary language. “Shopping” or “to shop” has taken on a new meaning for 21st century digeratti. Photoshop 1.0 was a rudimentary digital darkroom but everything changed at a fundamental level with the introduction of Layers in Photoshop 3.0 (1994). The ability to create complex non-destructive artworks has been a hallmark of the application. It has changed the way creatives think, interact and create. In fact, one might argue that Layers single-handedly transformed the creative process at a conceptual and functional level, allowing for a kaleidoscope of solutions with minimal effort.

Photoshop 5.0 presented us with colour management, editable type, the ‘History Palette” and the mostly useless ImageReady. Once ImageReady had withered, Adobe acknowledged the World Wide Web ‘from within’ with its “Save for Web” feature in version 5.5. ‘Shoppers’ were delighted, and the new millennium release of version 6.0 marked the apogee of Photoshop. One question remains; have the subsequent additions, application enhancements and integration with other family members really changed the way we work? Certainly, but only to within a pixel’s width of the average users needs. Photoshop’s CS incarnations are slick, highly sophisticated and enjoy productive conversations with siblings, but most of us would be satisfied with version 6.0’s suite of features.

However, Photoshop has such an all encompassing cultish presence within creative territories that we all feel inextricably seduced by the need to embrace future developments, despite having no real requirement for many of the shiny new tools that glitter by the light of our LCDs. Competitors have employed excellent reconnaissance and have had many years to draw on a wealth of tried and tested Photoshop innovations. Interestingly, Photoshop presently faces increased pressure on both flanks, including usurpers from within such as the budget priced Photoshop Elements, and more user specific solutions such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

64-Bit support and seamless Creative Suite integration are Adobe’s more recent gifts to the faithful, but version centric Camera Raw support is unforgivable. CS5 has just been launched and it will be a huge success. Yes, it will undoubtedly converse effortlessly with other Adobe apps and include a number of noteworthy but ultimately unnecessary enhancements. Photoshop is here to stay; but it’s no longer the passionate revolutionary of yore, but a somewhat more mature and sedate individual. An awesome individual nonetheless!