Origin
Photoshop was created by brothers Thomas and John Knoll. Both possessed a love for art and technology. They learned a lot from their father, who was knowledgeable in photography and enjoyed working on early home computers. Thomas learned aspects of photography such as contrast and color correction from his father. John learned about computers from his father and developed a love for technology. Thomas studies image processing at the University of Michigan and John worked at Industrial Light and Magic, which was the special effects division of Lucas Films that was created for the Star Wars films. In the late 1980’s, the brothers began working on what is known today as Photoshop. It went through many changes over the years.
Earliest Version
In 1987 Thomas and John created a program called Display, which enabled the ability to display images on a computer monitor. The brothers worked to add more features to display such as manipulating certain parts of an image and controlling balance and hue. In 1988, they changed the name to Image Pro and decided it was time to attempt to put it on the market. It went through several name changes before it hit the market. Though the program was ahead of its time compared to its competitors, most software companies turned it down.
Adoption by Adobe Systems
In 1989, the program was picked up by Adobe. It was licensed instead of wholesale, which allowed the Knoll brothers to retain royalty rights. They continued to work closely with Adobe in order to get the program ready for distribution. In 1990, Photoshop version 1 was released. The release was deemed a success and work on version 2 began immediately. Version 2 was released the following year. Initially, Photoshop was only available for MAC systems. By the time version 2.5 was created in 1992, the program was adapted for use on a PC. Each version of the Photoshop program was adapted and boasted new features. When version 5 was released, the program included color management. There were a lot of changes made in 1999 when version 5.5 was released. Updates included web features and improvement of styles and text. Each version seemed to add more and more features until 2003 when version 13 was released.
Evolutionary Phase
In 2003 Creative Suite was introduced and Photoshop CS was released for distribution. Between 2003 and 2012, there were 6 versions of Photoshop CS released. There were many changes that took place during this time. In 2005, CS2 boasted the red-eye tool as well as improvements to memory management. Creative suite included the following features: editing and retouching digital photos, editing digital video and developing web content. Another new feature included was 3D Modeling. The latest version, CS6, was released in 2012. In 2011, Adobe introduced Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud), but there were still versions of Creative Suite available. In 2013, new versions were solely released in Creative Cloud. After that, there would be no new versions of Creative Suite available. Some of the features include in Creative cloud are photo processor, image organizer and graphics editor.
Current Version
Currently, the most recent version of Photoshop available is CC2015.5. It was released in 2015 and boasts many new features. The ability to manipulate eye settings, nose settings, face shape settings and mouth settings. Another feature available is match font, which detects font used in photos. There have also been updates to the crop tool, which is used to crop and straighten photos. One of the newest features now available is 3D Printing.
Conclusion
Photoshop has come a long way since its inception as Display 29 years ago. It has gone through various name changes and many improvements have been made. What started out as two brothers just trying to make the graphics better on their father’s computer, has changed the face of image display and enhancement. Over the years, as technology has changed, so have the many features Photoshop has to offer. Adobe is still continuously coming up with new features and improvements. It appears as if each version is better than the one before. Since Photoshop was picked up by Adobe 27 years ago, Thomas and John Knoll continued to work on the program. They are still involved to this day.
Author: Anonymous writer from AdvancedWriters