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20 Years of Photoshop
benwiggy writes "Photoshop turned 20 on 10th February 2010. Here's an excellent history, including how the Knoll family created one of the biggest apps of all time. The article also has screenshots of the workspace through the versions."
Kudos photoshop. You know that you've done well with a piece of software when it turns into a verb.
That said, spread some lovin' over to the linux side of things. Right now that's the only thing that's keeping me from using linux as my main OS (using win7 right now).
Most likely, but given that Linux itself doesn't turn 20 'til next year, I'd say there's still a long way until then.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Photoshopping photos over 20 years old to show people using Photoshop. Then claim they are legit. "Photoshop is over 20 years old, you can clearly see here they were using it during the Civil War!"
The enemies of Democracy are
Kudos photoshop. You know that you've done well with a piece of software when it turns into a verb.
It's more than a verb, for some people it's a tradition and art form*. Had there been no Photoshop, something would have probably filled the void but it's definitely one of the (expensive) standards around.
*Yeah, I know you see a link to Something Awful and are thinking "not gonna click that!" but it's just the Photoshop Phriday main page, a site like the Onion that briefly brightens my week.
My work here is dung.
Sometimes I really miss photoshop 5.5.
7.0 was also pretty good. Things started to go down hill when they switched to the cs moniker
Photoshop 3.0, I got it off the USENET in the spring of '96. 68k version for my Performa 575 w/ 12MB ram.
This article looks totally photoshopped, its probably fake.
There is an article about the GIMP every time it farts.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
pics or it didnt happen
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Photoshop is only 10 years old. They photoshopped all the pictures to make it look like 20.
And also to give themselves more functional weapons of mass destruction.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Thought not.
Apart from MS Office, it has to be the most pirated bit of software in the world.
Deleted
Yep, no multiple windows throughout its history. Just the usual MDI with panels interface.
That says something from the industry's standard to the would-be competitors.
Not being a graphics designer, I never liked Photoshop which was too slow, bloated and complicated (and expensive) for my simple uses. In my Windows days, I first found Paint Shop Pro (of which I still have some prehistoric version somewhere), and finally ended up mostly using IrfanView and XnView, + occasionally PhotoFiltre.
While I'm sure Photoshop is a fantastic program for professionals, let's try a list of things normal users (like myself) mainly need in a graphics program:
- Rotate (losslessly for Jpeg)
- Resize
- Crop
- Print
- Convert to another format (Save as)
- Adjust brightness, contrast, white balance
Then maybe
- Edit metadata (Jpeg comments, Exif description, maybe IPTC tags)
- rarely convert a color scan to black and white.
- and maybe once or twice a year add something on a picture like text or a circle etc.
Obviously, Photoshop is really too much for this.
For Windows users, I know what to recommend (usually XnView; + PhotoFiltre if needed)
But I still don't know what to use on my Ubuntu desktop which has been my main machine for over 6 months. The Gimp feels just like Photoshop: too heavy and complicated (though the price is fine), and all the others I tried too limited (gThumb and the like). Is there a gem I missed somewhere?
Readable text version of article for older browsers or just for quick loading.
http://xkcd.com/331/
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
You're just saying that to obscure your interest in counterfeiting.
It's a sad state of affairs that open source should be so behind in image manipulation programs that people would rather spend thousands of dollars on license costs with draconian inspection clauses rather than use a truly free program. Sadly GIMP seems to be going nowhere and Paint.NET is targeting another audience.
While the sons may be known as the creators of photoshop their father is a giant in the field of nuclear engineering. His book "Raditation Detection and Measurement" is considered the bible on the topic for all nuclear engineers.
When the gimp turns 18, we'll celebrate with a gang-bang.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Eh 6 years isn't that long
You are so lazy you don't want an easy +5 funny?
Photoshop instructor here. It's a great app, but really is overkill for most needs. I actually used GIMP to design my Photoshop class websites, since I like some of the GTK conveniences better than Photoshop's relatively primitive widget set (can't hover over a spinner and use the scroll wheel alone to change the value, being one example).
Of course, I don't really advertise GIMP in my classes, but I do give extra credit to students who are willing to give it a try and write a review (they can also choose to try other software, like Aviary).
Anyway, it's nice of Adobe to keep improving Photoshop, but it's amazing how many millions of dollars have gone into this software, and it is still getting a bad rep for tons of crashes, expensive third-party plugins, weird bugs, etc.
Funny how in that video of the John Knoll interview, you realize that one of the people filming is actually Guy Kawasaki. Well, at least that's funny to me anyway.
In February of 1990, Adobe 1.0 was released.
You'd think that in an article on Photoshop, they wouldn't make the irritating novice mistake of conflating "Adobe" (the company) with "Photoshop" (the product). I expect this from the idiots where I work, where complaints of "my Adobe isn't working!" are common, but from them?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Twenty years of lens flare.
"At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format. PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG..."
And while we're at it, I have to say: Can we please be done with the idea that web mockups should be done in Photoshop? It never was a good tool for designing web layouts. The idea that it ever was is an artifact of its market position and the popularity of certain raster effects at the time the web rose. Illustrator has been a better tool for web layouts for a while, and Fireworks (with a fantastic blend of vector and raster capabilities) is even better, and there are probably half a dozen other vector capable layout tools I'm not aware of that are better...
(Please do not suggest Gimp or PSP. They're bad choices for web layouts for the same reasons Photoshop is.) /soapbox
Tweet, tweet.
It's www.paint.net. Annoying.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
For my pea sized brain, that is a good thing (TM). the fact that I'm comfortable in photoshop is driven home every time I try to use the GIMP. I rally want the GIMP to be successful, but my brain has been bent into the adobe way of doing things, and I'm a lost cause.
All you need to do is see someone with good photoshop skills (think professional, rather than a dabbler like me), and you'll see why adobe has kept the UI largely unchanged. The keyboard shortcuts and pallet and tool placement becomes second nature to someone with a lot of seat time. Seeing what can be done in seconds or minutes by a skilled photoshop pilot is awe inspiring. Having the core interface change would be like moving your dog's food bowl; just not a good thing.
Sheldon
(cs4 user - yeah I bought it)
The truth is that the mac and Apple is often is one of the first to get truly revolutionary enabling applications. Think Visicalc. [...]
You're right about Photoshop and Excel but VisiCalc was originally written for the Apple II. Afterwards, versions were developed for the Atari, Commodore PET, TRS-80 and IBM PC but there never was a version for the Mac.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Gimp is not nearly as important in the world of free software as Photoshop is in the proprietary one. 25 years of vi, that's a milestone.
Quality of applications? You used CS4 on a Mac? It's appallingly slow, I use VirtualBox with XP and run CS4 on that which is much, much faster. When I need more power than provided by the VM, I walk across the room to my gaming PC with Win7.
A full version of Photoshop CS4 costs more than a cheap second hand car. Elements is cheaper but crippled in ways that make it much less useful even for a casual amateur. You use to be able to get around those restrictions up to Elements 2.0. Now Elements is a very different piece of software (ironically with some unique features of its own). Photoshop is wonderful, but it's a pity it's either inaccessible or pirated for a great many people. It's probably more pirated than Windows.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Yeah, I'm in CADCAM. That means Windows.
What does Microsoft have to do with anything. Seriously - Microsoft doesn't need anyone cheerleading for them (even now, I'm sure they could buy and sell photoshop in their sleep), and it's not like Photoshop directly competes with them on anything (except maybe the wareze scene?). So, where the fuck did that comparison even come from?
Sadly I must agree. However it's only my opinion. Photoshop from v7 up kinda lost it for me. All subsequent versions of PS just added more functions I don't use and probably never will. Maybe I should wait for PS elements to reach CS7 to be usable for everything PS7 could do. ... and yes. I've tried GIMP too.
With all the "brilliance" that the article refers to in Photoshop that was contributed by the Knoll family, are they fantastically wealthy? They basically created an industry segment all by themselves, one that is very robust to this day. I would hope they were suitably rewarded, though all of them are working in essentially the same places/jobs that they were 20 years ago! Do they work for fun or do they need to work for money?
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. People said that about Microsoft Office (it really hadn't changed its UI much in over a decade), then they released Office 2007 and everyone screamed bloody murder because the interface was overhauled.
Photoshop isn't the simplest program in existence to pick up and use, but I'm of the persuasion that if the interface was *that* terrible that Adobe would have, at some point, done an Office 2007 ribbon-esque revamp, but my graphic designer friends give me the vibe that the UI was pretty solidly designed the first time around and really only needed to be tweaked and extended to accommodate new features as time progressed.
I generally agree that Fireworks is superior for web mockups. However, I hope they get around to fixing text handling, which is still awful after all these years, which forces me back to Photoshop or Illustrator just to add text parts. In other respects, Fireworks CS4 is pretty amazing; able to spit CSS layouts from slices and all that.
My job used to require me to know everything about some Adobe programs. They paid me to become an Adobe Certified Expert in several. For versions CS, CS2 and CS3 of Adobe Illustrator I could tell you with complete accuracy and certainty what EVERY FEATURE did. You could pick a random item from a random menu and I could tell you what it did and why.
Now, please, tell me exactly which of those items is bloatware? Just because *YOU* don't know what something is for, does not mean it has no reason for being there.
Out of curiosity, why would you use the scroll wheel to change a value? Most values like transparency or opacity can be quickly changed by hitting numbers on the keyboard. I'd much rather hit 5 to set the opacity of my brush to 50% rather than scroll half way through the spinner. To each their own but if you're using Photoshop all day, using a scroll wheel to change values seems terribly inefficient.
Your correction needs a correction.
It's www.getpaint.net.
If you're going to be annoyed by someone's mistake, try not to annoy others with your mistake.
- not annoyed.
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=08172004
I had similar views to yours. Then I happened to get a summer job working for a desktop publisher and so had to use photoshop. I won't claim to be an expert - and I'm awfully rusty now - but you can do very awesome things in Photoshop extremely easily if you happen to have spent a large number of hours learning how. Yes, Photoshop is hard to _learn_ but it is very easy to use.
You say that ordinary users just need to , adjust brightness etc.but I don't think this is true. Ordinary users want to tune up their photos - e.g. sharpen, remove the shadow from someone's face, take the reflection off someone's glasses, remove a lamp-post or cyclist that unfortunately interfere with the shot, replace the blinking eyes from one photo with the open eyes from the next (especially group photos where someone is invariably looking away), etc, slightly fancier resize (e.g. fix camera not quite straight).
Also, my bet is that my list of basic features and the guy next to me's list will not be identical - if you want to make all basic users happy then I suspect you'll be in for a big list of features. For instance a grandmother with a thousand old photos in a shoe box will have a very different basic list to the one I gave above involving scratch removal and the like.
Now, I've completely avoided answering your question. Instead I've told you to invest the time in learning gimp, it will pay off over the years. In terms of actually answering your question I haven't found a good answer - Apple's Aperture is an attempt, and Adobe makes Photoshop Elements but they all suck
Probably because the rate of features being added hasn't slowed down but the rate of processor performance increases has slowed significantly.
Can you do that just by hovering over a spinner box? Aside from that it just seems to be a personal preference, and I see no reason to try to paint as something that inefficient use X all day long without any objective evidence. I take advantage of the ability to click next to a slider to change the value in discrete steps, it may seem like inefficient use of screen space to some, but it's arguable whether reducing all UI elements to their bare minimum to save some pixels makes up for the reduced amount of information.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Gimp is not nearly as important in the world of free software as Photoshop is in the proprietary one. 25 years of vi, that's a milestone.
So both unimportant then...
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
What PS has what GIMP does not have?
Actually it's a very nice feeling. I know what you mean about adjusting opacity values, but what about minor things that don't have such convenient shortcuts? What about auditioning fonts? I'd rather do that with the scroll wheel than any other method I've tried, keyboard-based or not.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that an article on Photoshop has such low-quality screenshots? Most, if not all of them, are JPEG's, and almost all of them have been badly rescaled down (and a few of them down then up again).
--- Mr. DOS
I'd much rather hit 5 to set the opacity of my brush to 50% rather than scroll half way through the spinner.
That's reasonable, and I'd usually do the same. Hey, I'm a geek - sometimes I'm just not happy with the results until they're mathematically precise. However, artists (and sometimes I) don't always work that way, and will adjust values until "it looks right". If working with paints, they don't often mix 2.3mL of some shade of red with 1.45mL of a certain blue. Instead, they'll add a little more of one or the other until they're happy with the results. Well, same with computer graphics: they'll use a widget to slide back and forth across a range of values until they likes the look of it.
Hitting "5" to get "50%" is very precise. Precision isn't always what an artist wants.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think the key was in his use of the words "mac and Apple".
Perhaps inkscape is the GPL'd vector image editor you seek.
Inkscape is great. I'm still happier to pay to use Fireworks for a variety of other reasons, but if Inkscape suddenly became the weapon of choice for web mockups instead of Photoshop, I'd be delighted.
Tweet, tweet.
I still have Photoshop (version 2 I recall) which I tried using sometime ago to buy an upgraded version of PS CS or CS2 but the oldest they went back to at the time was 4 or 5.
For me though I think Photoshop 6 was the first time I really got into it and to be quite honest it's still one of my favourite versions. PS 7 was awful, imo.
Photoshop has been a part of every web designer's life since they picked up their first mouse.
Say what? Why does a web designer even need a high-end graphics editor? Unless, of course, he's running an art web site. Or he's one of those really inept designers who doesn't understand the difference between print design and web design.
I thought it was funny, although you did forget the "Ima let you finish", and you probably should have repeated "OF ALL TIME!" just like that at the end.
Lots of people say the problem with the Mac is that it has no applications. The truth is that the mac and Apple is often is one of the first to get truly revolutionary enabling applications. Think Visicalc. Think Photoshop. Think MacWrite. Think Excel. The iPhone is the same thing.
This is not to say that the PC does not have a greater number of applications, but when one thinks of what is able to be cheaply done on a computer, one thinks of a Visicalc, PhotoShop, page layout, etc.
I think for the same money, I could buy a just about as fast PC, with an extra monitor and a photoshop license. Oh wait, I think I did.
Out of curiosity, why would you use the scroll wheel to change a value? Most values like transparency or opacity can be quickly changed by hitting numbers on the keyboard. I'd much rather hit 5 to set the opacity of my brush to 50% rather than scroll half way through the spinner. To each their own but if you're using Photoshop all day, using a scroll wheel to change values seems terribly inefficient.
I use an Intuos you insensitive clod!
Yes. An article reflecting on the history of a piece of image-editing software, and how it grew out of the efforts of a single family, also includes extensive details on criminal copyright lawsuits initiated by the distribution company.
Or UNIX. For some reason, the CAD people run about 15 years behind the rest of the world. Some of them still support HP-UX (seriously, WTF?) and Solaris. When was the last time you saw an old-skool UNIX workatation? They have barely caught on to the idea that Linux has moved beyong kernel 0.99 and is quite popular with engineers.
To be honest, I'm kind suprised not to see brand new versions being released for NT 3.5.1.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Has anyone ever used ArtGem here?
It feels like an updated version of Amiga Deluxe Paint to use. Although it's not as powerful as Photoshop, it's faster, cheaper and much nicer to use. Unfortunately, it's been discontinued apparently due to piracy.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
If you don't know exactly what transparency looks the best, I can imagine using a scroll wheel to dial it up or down. Much easier and precise than sliders (especially when making changes to a huge raw file on an underpowered machine) Think of it as a dimmer switch for your lens flares.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
You are so lazy you don't want an easy +5 funny?
It doesn't give Karma, so why bother logging in?
February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
xv! xv is ancient, but it did pretty much all this back in 1994. "xv 3.10a, Last release 12/29/94" it says on the splash window. And it still works well after all these years. Can't say that about many pieces of software. For simple editing, I still use it, even on my Mac (though you do need a two-button mouse).
My job used to require me to know everything about some Adobe programs. They paid me to become an Adobe Certified Expert in several. For versions CS, CS2 and CS3 of Adobe Illustrator I could tell you with complete accuracy and certainty what EVERY FEATURE did. You could pick a random item from a random menu and I could tell you what it did and why.
Now, please, tell me exactly which of those items is bloatware? Just because *YOU* don't know what something is for, does not mean it has no reason for being there.
I do get a kick out of the *bloat* complainers. If Adobe stripped some functionality and moved it to a different application, the same people would be up in arms over Adobe trying to get more money for the same thing, and then complaining about having to close photoshop and open another application just to do a couple things. Some people complain, simply to complain.
Then again, here I am complaining about the complainers...
Don't forget Marathon and Myst. :P
Comment of the year
Yeah, good point. I guess I need to learn to read before commenting.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Nicely played, sir.
you had me at #!
I'm very happy doing front end development from a PSD if it's been made by a GOOD web designer, i.e:
(BTW there are MANY other things that make a good web designer but these are a few that I thought were relevant)
I'm not a web designer my self but the ones I work with find photoshop more intuitive which means they think less about the software and more about design.
The article leaves out quite a bit of the history of digital paint programs. This article contains a good summary (although it also leaves out yet other work).
The splashscreens are from MAC, but the screenshots from Windows :)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
20 years of photoshopping photos of ourselves to make ourselves look more attractive!
I'm not the only one who has done that, right?
Hmm. What do you hit to set the opacity to 5%?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
M
Now, please, tell me exactly which of those items is bloatware? Just because *YOU* don't know what something is for, does not mean it has no reason for being there.
Insert rant about hanging a web-forms wannabe bag on the side of a document format meant for portable printing consistency...
What about auditioning fonts? I'd rather do that with the scroll wheel than any other method I've tried, keyboard-based or not.
You can do this with the scroll wheel. You need to click the text of the font name rather than just hovering over it, but you can scroll-wheel through fonts.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
That's what I do when I use Photoshop. :-) Still not the same though.
...document format meant for portable printing consistency...
Except the AI format is NOT meant for printing consistency alone. It turns out that vector based graphics work very well in SEVERAL markets. Specifically AI documents are used in three main markets, printing, web development and special effects (CGI).
Adobe could have made three different products, each with a few less features, one each to target a specific market. Or it could just make one product that meets the needs of all three markets. So you wont use XYZ feature if you are doing only one of them. Big deal, the interface is not cluttered, you can close panels. The program is not any slower, the code behind each feature DOES NOT RUN if you don't use that feature.
The only down side to more features is that the executable code takes up more room on your hard drive. If you took out all features not related to printing then you would say a grand 20MB tops. Even if it halved the size of the program on disk it still would not be worth it to me to not have abilities to save as a SVG or export to After Effects or any of the other features.
You are basically asking for Adobe to charge you the same price for less features. That does not make sense to me.
Are there good Photoshop tutorials on the web that walk you from a beginner level to advanced photo manipulation?
...document format meant for portable printing consistency...
Except the AI format is NOT meant for printing consistency alone. It turns out that vector based graphics work very well in SEVERAL markets. Specifically AI documents are used in three main markets, printing, web development and special effects (CGI).
Snipped the rest, as it's focused on an incorrect assumption.
Illustrator is not the only software Adobe sells.
I was talking about PDF and their "extensions" to it, with all the charlie-foxtrots they bring.
Even I think PDF's have a bit much in the way of features. But I can guarantee that if you singled out one of them and said, "lets take this out," you would have a whole bunch of people objecting, stating that their job depends on that feature. *shrugs*
Even I think PDF's have a bit much in the way of features. But I can guarantee that if you singled out one of them and said, "lets take this out," you would have a whole bunch of people objecting, stating that their job depends on that feature. *shrugs*
Exactly. And that's part of the problem. It's like using PS to do web site mockups: you start adding features for these ridiculous use cases and end up with horrible messes.
Kitchen sinks, hammers, and nails.
Wow, I had no idea what this "Photos Shop" thing was all about. Thanks, man! One complaint though- I had quite a bit of trouble figuring out what a "february" is, should've linked to that as well.