eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Adobe Systems’ Photoshop graphics editing software has hit the 20-year mark.
Adobe Photoshop turned 20 on Feb. 19 and is still going strong. In a news release the previous day, the company said:
“The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) will be hosting a special Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration for over a thousand attendees in San Francisco at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theater today. The event will feature Adobe’s senior vice president of Creative Solutions, John Loiacono, as well as vice president of Photoshop Product Management Kevin Connor, Photoshop co-creator Thomas Knoll and famed Adobe creative director and Photoshop evangelist Russell Brown.”
“For 20 years Photoshop has played many different roles-it has given creative people the power to deliver amazing images that impact every part of our visual culture and challenged the eye with its ability to transform photographs,” Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Narayen said in a statement. “It’s no exaggeration to say that, thanks to millions of creative customers, Photoshop has changed the way the world looks at itself.”
The Adobe release continued:
““In 1987, Thomas Knoll developed a pixel imaging program called Display. It was a simple program to showcase grayscale images on a black-and-white monitor. However, after collaborating with his brother John Knoll, the two began adding features that made it possible to process digital image files. The program eventually caught the attention of industry influencers, and in 1988, Adobe made the decision to license the software, naming it Photoshop, and shipping the first version in 1990.”Twenty years ago, Adobe predicted that it would sell 500 copies of Photoshop per month,” said Thomas Knoll, co-creator of Photoshop at Adobe. “I guess you could say, we beat those projections! It’s amazing to think that millions of people use this software today. We knew we had a groundbreaking technology on our hands, but we never anticipated how much it would impact the images we see all around us. The ability to seamlessly place someone within an image was just the beginning of Photoshop’s magic.”Over its 20-year history, Photoshop has evolved significantly from a simple original display program to a wildly popular application that has over 10 million users worldwide. With each release, Adobe has introduced technological innovations that defy the impossible. Layers, introduced in Photoshop 3.0, gave designers the ability to create complex compositions [more easily] than ever before. The Healing Brush, another groundbreaking feature introduced in Photoshop 7.0, allowed users to magically retouch images by seamlessly removing blemishes and wrinkles, while preserving lighting and texture. Photoshop tools like crop, eraser, blur and dodge and burn have become part of the creative vernacular worldwide.”“
And on Feb. 19, Ansca, a mobile applications development platform maker, said in a news release:
““A limited-edition Adobe Photoshop 20th anniversary commemorative iPhone app was released to select attendees today at the Photoshop 20th Anniversary Event […]”The Photoshop 20th Anniversary app was spearheaded by Russell Brown, Adobe’s Senior Creative Director and one of the original Photoshop team members. The app itself is a replica of Photoshop 1.0, which Adobe debuted in 1990 exclusively on the Macintosh.”I really wanted to do something special to commemorate 20 years of Photoshop, and the best thing I thought of was a nostalgic iPhone app,” said Brown. “Since I had less than two weeks to make it happen, I came to the best iPhone team I knew, who were able to use their Corona SDK to pull it off with utmost speed and faithfulness to the original product.”To build the app, Brown enlisted the help of Ansca Mobile, creators of the Corona SDK. The Ansca team used Corona to bring the essence of the original Photoshop to the iPhone.”“