Photoshop: The History Of Creation

Photoshop is a photo manipulation tool created by Thomas and John Knoll. Both brothers had a strong passion for photography as well as technology. Their father was very interested and knowledgeable in both fields and helped their passion grow from a young age. Contrast and colour correction were taught to Thomas from his father while John developed a love for technology and computers. Thomas then went on to study image processing at the University of Michigan whereas John worked at “Industrial Light and Magic”, who were in fact the team that worked with “LucasFilms” to produce the Star Wars films. It was only until the late 80s when they both started working on the software that would eventually become what we call today, “Photoshop”

John and Thomas created a program called “Display” in 1987, which allowed users to view images and photos on their PC. Over time, the brothers worked on developing the ability to manipulate certain parts of the picture (e.g. Controlling balance and Hue). They changed the name to “Image Pro” and decided that putting it on the market was the best way of testing how good their product is. Multiple names were thought of during the development process before it finally hit the shelves. Sadly, it was turned down by most software companies, even though it was so radically different from any other competitor.

Adobe picked up the software in 1989. To allow the 2 brothers to keep their royalty rights, the product was listed as wholesale. Until they decided it was ready to be distributed under the Adobe name, they both worked parties worked closely together on the project until Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990. They began working on a 2.0 immediately due to the success of the first one and so 2.0 was released the following year. Strangely the first release was only available on MAC but when version 2.5 was made in 1992, it had been adapted to work with PC as well. Each new version of photoshop had been modified to have new features and abilities the users can edit with leading up to the ability to edit colour management when version 5 was released. In 1999 when version 5.5 released, many new changes had been made. Updates included improvement of styles and text and web features. Every new release of photoshop seemed to add more features making the software even better until 2013.

Photoshop CS and Creative Suite were released for distribution in 2003. 6 versions of Photoshop CS were released between 2003 and 2012 and during this time, many changes took place. Some noteworthy additions came in 2005 with CS2 which included the red-eye tool as improved on memory management. Along with editing video and web content, creative suite introduced new tools like 3D modeling along with improving on digital photo editing. Even with the new Photoshop CC (creative cloud) Adobe had introduced in 2011, there were still new versions of the Creative Suite available although after 2013 all new versions would be released through CC so that meant no new versions of Creative Suite would be distributed. Photo processing, image organizing, and graphics editing were all features brought along with CC

CC 2019 (20.0.5) is the most up-to-date version of photoshop to release so far. It was released in 2019 and it only improves on the overall soft wear itself by fixing bugs and security. Features added over the past few years include a multitude of face manipulation options for your eyes, mouth, nose and face shape. Another feature available is match font, which detects font used in photos. In recent years with the increase in 3D printing, Adobe have been adding support to their products, you can print your 3D objects on your own 3D printer, export the object for printing, or print to a 3D printing service.

Since the inception of Display 31 years ago, photoshop had come so technologically throughout the multitude of changes to not only the software but also the name. This small program created by 2 sons under the guidance of their father had changed photography forever. New features and improvements are always being released by Adobe with each version being better than the last. To this day Thomas and John Knoll continued to work on the program with version CC2015 dedicated to the 2 brothers.

Photoshop is definitely a double-edged sword or the photography world, creating amazing and creative pictures, but the feeling of photoshopping strips away any story and the feeling of capturing a once in a lifetime shot by being able to enhance or add anything to the shot that wasn’t originally there. The main concern of the photography community is deciding whether the enhancements crosses the boundary and starts alterations to the original. The joy of photography is finding the elusive and not creating it digitally. Its not a crime to create the piece you can envision but it’s always that sad moment when you look at a super saturated landscape shot that is just a bit too perfect.