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Soviet Image Editing Tool From 1987

Posted by timothy on from the airbrushing-is-so-stalinist-1940s dept.

nacturation writes "Three years before Photoshop 1.0 was released, computer engineers in the USSR were already retouching photographs using some surprisingly advanced technology. A video shows how the Soviets went about restoring damaged images with the help of rotary scanners, magnetic tape, and trackballs. No word on whether this technology was used to fake moon landings or put missiles in Cuba." Photo manipulation in the USSR (and elsewhere) had a pretty good jump on computers, though.

5 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Er... yeah... and ? by MouseR · · Score: 3, Informative

    Earlier in the late 70s and early 80s, people around the globe used Crossfield and Hell drum scanners to retouch photos. Yeahs before computers were able to do it.

    I had pieces of a Hell drum scanner in my office in 1988 when I was building an image correction software to control it. By then, ImagePro had already been doing this for a couple of years, on computers.

  2. from comments there by JustFisher · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not Soviet , it's French ! It's a PERICOLOR-1000 system with a software translated to Russian. They used to buy hardware and software in the West and change it a bit(translate) and present it as one developed internally in some scientific institute. Here is the discussion in Russian: http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/history/107465/

  3. In fact it is French PERICOLOR-1000 Software by Elixon · · Score: 5, Informative

    One of the Russian comments points out that the software is in fact French PERICOLOR-1000 translated to Russian.

    --
    Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
    1. Re:In fact it is French PERICOLOR-1000 Software by estestvoispytatel · · Score: 3, Informative

      Up to mid-60s there was some quite good domestic computers in the USSR, but almost all of the developing teams (spare some military projects) were switched to, well, copying of the three unified systems from the West, mainly because Politburo's dumbfucks were educated not enough to effectively direct and support R&D. You know, command economy has no natural feedback and very skewed competition.

  4. What about Quantel? by gilesjuk · · Score: 4, Informative

    Quantel Paintbox beats them both, it was first launched in 1981!

    Quantel sued two companies, one of them being Adobe but didn't win the Adobe case, largely due to the existance of Superpaint, who's author testified in the case.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantel_Paintbox
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpaint