As one of the most popular software for designers, Photoshop has released its 21st version in 2020. Apparently, it has always been a key research and development project of Adobe company. Its emergence and early history are also very interesting.
Photoshop went through two “evolutions” before it belonged to Adobe. In 1987, PhD student Tom Knoll wrote a graphics application in a Macintosh Plus. It was used to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. This is the unofficial father of Photoshop.
Later, under the influence of his family, especially his brother John, a photography enthusiast, Tom turned it into an image editing software. At this time, it is called ImagePro, which is also the first “verbalization” software. At that time, people would say “I ImagePro-ed my photo.” However, the name was already taken for copyright so he opted to call it Photoshop (version 0.07). Incidentally, splash screens from very early versions show the name as ‘PhotoShop’ – which seems far more in line with today’s craze for ExTraneous CapitaliSation.
After Adobe bought Photoshop in 1989, the official version was released soon in 1990. Photoshop 1.0, which includes digital color editing and retouching, is designed for high-end platforms such as SciTex. Later, with the popularity of color computers, Photoshop added path, CMYK color and pen tools to the new version, largely attributed to a man named Mark Hamburg. Since then, Photoshop supports not only Mac, but also Windows system.
In the new century, the Photoshop team realized that image editing was not enough, so they began to develop text, brush, layer, filter and other functions. These powerful functions lay the foundation of Photoshop as a milestone software. Since the release of Photoshop CS in 2003, its changes mainly focus on improving the interactivity and user experience. For example, darker interface, pan and zoom, auto-save, more intelligent filter library and so on. These make Photoshop more and more popular, making it the most competitive software of its category.
References:
Jake, M. (July 3, 2019). Design history of Adobe Photoshop. [online] techrev. Available at: <https://techrev.me/design-history-of-adobe-photoshop/ >[Accessed 17 November 2020].
1stwebdesigner.com (January 17, 2016). The Interesting History of Adobe Photoshop. [online]. Available at: <https://1stwebdesigner.com/history-of-adobe-photoshop/> [Accessed 17 November 2020].
Creativebloq.com (December 13, 2005). The history of Photoshop. [online]. Available at: <https://www.creativebloq.com/adobe/history-photoshop-12052724>[Accessed 17 November 2020].
Ann, Y. (n.d.) PHOTOSHOP HISTORY: FROM PHOTOSHOP 1.0 TO PHOTOSHOP CC. [online]. fixthephoto. Available at: <https://fixthephoto.com/photoshop-history.html>[Accessed 17 November 2020].
I never know about PS’s history. Thank you for your sharing that!
I am kind of shock that the first version of Photoshop looks so similar to Microsoft Paint. I think to look through the history of Photoshop, I start to understand how it becomes one of the most famous software on everyone computer, it just keeps getting more powerful, but also file getting bigger and much complicated.
Thank you for sharing! that’s very interesting, good to know the history of Photoshop.
I’m surprised that although a lot of functions have been added throughout the time, the main framework & tools of the interface remained almost the same from the very first generation till now.
Thank you for letting me know the history of Photoshop. What surprised me was that Photoshop changed the logo 14 times.