Adobe is today celebrating the 25th anniversary of Photoshop, which first launched as a Mac-only app on 19th February 1990.
What went on to become the industry standard image editing app started life in 1987, when Thomas Knoll, a computer vision doctorate student at the University of Michigan, began developing it on his Mac Plus. Known then as Display, the app was designed to do nothing more than display grayscale images on the Macintosh’s black-and-white monitor. As Adobe showcases in the video below, the app has come rather a long way since then …
Adobe says that it wanted to look back at where Photoshop came from before focusing during the rest of the year on where it will be heading.
Today, the digital imaging revolution that Photoshop started is so pervasive that remembering a time before it existed takes some work. So it’s with great pleasure, on Photoshop’s 25th anniversary, that we look back to the simpler, pre-millennial world into which it was born, not to celebrate the past but to recognize what an awesome transformation our world has undergone in such a short amount of time.
If you want the tl;dr version, Adobe has released a 67-second video showcasing some of the images created in Photoshop over the years.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmYc1MNJaQc]
Jimmy Kimmel had some fun with Photoshop, inviting last night’s studio audience to guess whether a series of images were really seen in this week’s Fashion Show, or were fakes created in Photoshop.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XXCudKdeU]
If you’re a long-time user of the app, and are in the mood for a wander down memory lane, Adobe has shared the evolving icons and names the app has enjoyed–from Photoshop 1.0 to Photoshop CC 2014.
While Mashable has pulled together a great collection of videos, including a detailed, 8-minute video of John Knoll–who assisted his brother Thomas in creating the app–demonstrating Photoshop 1.0:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tda7jCwvSzg]
And to show just how far computing power has come, here’s a 2010 video of Photoshop 1.0 running on an iPhone.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGc8OBp-Wh0]
Check out many more videos over at Mashable, together with an excellent run-thru the history of the app by Amateur Photographer, who shared the first ever image edited in Photoshop–a photo of John Knoll’s then-girlfriend and later wife.
If you have your own memories of early versions of Photoshop, do share them in the comments.
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I remember picking up Adobe 3.0 years ago. I didn’t know anything about design or image manipulation back then, but I had self-taught myself everything Photoshop-related since picking up that version. Fast forward 20-sum years later and here I am, a graphic designer and an inspiration to be an art teacher when my time in the military is up. I plan to use Photoshop as part of my curriculum. Thanks John Knoll!
Cool :-)
Oh! I remember PS3 came out and literally saved the company where I was working. Instead of investing in more Scitex equipment, we could run with composite EPS-JPEG from PS3 in Scitex Level2 RIPs.
I remember the first time I used Photoshop. I said screw this, and went back to Corel Draw. :3
That wasn’t a lasting impression though, I swore by it from 7 to CS3. Now I’m using Pixelmator exclusively, after years of running it side-by-side with Photoshop and one day realizing that I don’t ever use Photoshop anymore.
I’m similar on the photography side – use Lightroom now almost exclusively.
I will be very interested in your official breakdown of the release version of Photos then. Curious as to how professional the unprofessional app will be.
I never use iPhoto, and am not expecting to use Photos, so will only take a look out of curiosity.
I’ve been using creative software in the highest level markets professionally since Photoshop 2, but Lightroom left me totally cold. The interface is beyond alien – clearly designed for a narrow slice of a subset within the pro realm, but for many pros it represents some sort of psychotic break. It is the Excel of the photo world – if you have mastered the weirdness and illogic you can get a lot out of it.
Wow! 25 years, I really am old. I’m one of the original Photoshop beta testers along with a few other cool Adobe, Aldus and Strata applications. I’ve used every version almost every day of my life. It’s a little like an old friend. I miss crazy phone tag messages with lunatic Art Directors (shout out to Russell) and after hour Adobe parties during MacWorld.
Great article, and interesting to see. I’ve used since version 4, and have owned every version since then. I still use Aperture for most of my batch photo work (it’s faster, sexier, easier than Lightroom, which I own, and has brilliant built-in portrait controls), but still use Photoshop pretty much every day to fine-tune or manipulate images. Just created a series of melting Surreal shoes for Neiman Marcus. I own most photo programs that run on Mac, but find that I return to Photoshop most of the time because I’ve learned it so well over the years, and it’s just faster and more comfortable to use. Plus, I own a huge amount of plugins that don’t always work or work as well in Lightroom or Aperture. Today, much of my old film-photography work that is being shown in Contemporary Art Museums, and the film images I scan and print for famous artists, all corrected in Photoshop.
Two and half minutes load time. Then a Celeron upgrade, and 1 and half minutes load time. THOSE were the days.
25 years? How come the UI is so clunky¿
I think that comes from trying to be all things to all image-workers … Lightroom has a lovely, flowing UI because it’s designed for one audience – professional photographers – and works the way they do.
Flowing? It is beyond unintuitive. It is like the English language – someone who is really good at that particular language uses it as an art form, but try to teach it to a non-native speaker and they are constantly stumped by the quirks, illogic, conflicting rules and such. The manipulation of images in LR is great, the handling of them is bizarre.
My experience is the exact opposite: the first time I used it, I almost sighed with relief that finally Adobe understood how photographers work.
Have been using Photoshop for 20 of those years.
Only problem, the last one I bought, and that is an important word, “bought” was GS5 and I am using that today. It’s just too expensive to either own or rent Photoshop, I use to do lot’s of photos on my website but we changed to no photos because of high cost with Getty and I have very little need for Photoshop now.
Will linger with GS5 until it won’t run anymore on my Mac and get some cheap version to do by resizing of photographs.
Photoshop is big but I have to wonder if just like Microsoft it won’t get eaten up by smaller, hungrier companies that will give us programs that are close to Photoshop but cost 10% of photoshop.
One thing that I am realizing, how many people that own photoshop really need the power that it has??? Most of the time a person just needs to touch up a photo and resize it, you don’t need an expensive program like Photoshop to do that.
I bet at least half of the folks that use Photoshop today can get a much cheaper program to do what they need. Yes Adobe is big now but will they be able to continue the next 25 years???
Pirated version 1.0 from my friend’s mom who worked at a newspaper. It was a big step up from MacPaint.
Boy this is some good nostalgia for me, I used version 2.5 on a Macintosh LC in my very first Graphic Design class in college (1994). Ah the memories! I love you, Photoshop (and Macintosh).
Loved Photoshop since the first time I used it 15 years ago. What other app is an adjective and verb in popular culture.
Happy Anniversary Photoshop!
INFOGRAPHIC tribute to the glorious history of Photoshop here: http://www.psd-dude.com/tutorials/resources/adobe-photoshop-twenty-five-years-anniversary-infographic.aspx
I remember how nice it was when, for a period of over twenty years, my master Photoshop files were considered to be my intellectual property and I didn’t have to pay rent in order to access them. Pleasant memories.