How did Photoshop appear

Adobe Photoshop has been a killer application for Macintosh for a while. In the mid-1990s, publishing and graphic design crowded out ordinary consumers as an important market, at least in the eyes of Apple CEO Gil Amelio and Michael Spindler. Consumer Macs faded from the fact that Apple has invested a lot of money in the development of multiprocessor Macs and insane replacements for the Mac OS. Even after Apple emerged from the crisis of the mid-90s, Photoshop remains extremely popular, and even turned into a verb describing the process of retouching and editing images, despite the reluctance of this from Adobe.


Knolls

Photoshop is not the result of careful work in the depths of Adobe. On the contrary, it was designed by Thomas Knoll and his brother John. The boys' father, Glenn Knoll, was a professional photographer and early supporter of microcomputers - the addictions that his boys inherited from him. John became interested in photography, showing his film in my father's darkroom. His hobby was not limited to simple interest, since he later took up color printing, and this is a very scrupulous process compared to the manifestation of black and white film. Having learned the art of color manipulation and posting photos, which he did, John acquired the skills that he later realizes in Photoshop.
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John was terribly in love with programming. His father brought Apple II + to the house and he became his programming environment. John quickly became friends with the computer. In an interview with Apple, he said that his father "used the computer for his research, and this happened mostly in the evenings, so when he came home from school, the computer beckoned him to him." In 1984, to the delight of John Glenn, he replaced the aging Apple II + with a new Macintosh. From that moment on, he became a Macintosh supporter. John was able to combine his hobby with his career when he settled in Industrial Light and Magic - one of the Pixar branches.

Display

Thomas went to college, earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of Michigan and began working on his doctorate in computer imaging or, as the University of Michigan graduate journal, “digital imaging” means. Thomas purchased Mac + for his work. Unfortunately, Mac + was not designed to view images in color or even in black and white. To enable him to continue his research, Thomas wrote a program that allowed him to view images using anti-aliasing on a 1-bit display (black and white), and which he called Display. Display did not have a graphical interface, it used the shell command line C. The program was no longer able to do anything other than display color or black and white images on Mac +. Thomas's brother was so impressed with this program that Thomas soon forgot about his research.

In Industrial Light and Magic, John took advantage of his brother's program and was amazed. Industrial Light and Magic was one of the first companies to receive Pixar Image computers that Pixar employees developed at Lucas Film before they went on sale in 1985. In an interview for Industrial Light and Magic, John said: “As soon as Tom showed me his program, I was amazed at how similar it was to the image processing tools Pixar used.” The huge difference was that Display worked on Mac + for $ 2,599, and Pixar cost $ 135,000. John suggested that Thomas transform his program into an image editor that would allow users to manipulate their digital images as if they were in a darkroom. And they began to work together on the successor to Display.

Photoshop

In 1988, Display was previously renamed ImagePro and Thomas began adding editing features to the program. For a start, John suggested adding a gamma correction function so that the images could be made less dull when displayed on the screen, but soon Thomas added a lot of techniques that he had learned at his father’s photo lab. John was the first to suggest using ImagePro as a commercial product instead of free shareware, but none of the brothers had any idea how difficult it would be to find a distributor and raise the program to the level needed by the consumer. Thomas postponed his doctorate for half a year and tried to turn ImagePro into a commercial product.



Image editing was not a novelty for Macintoshs or personal computers in general. Amiga computers were very much loved by professional photographers for their graphic and editorial features. Unfortunately, some commercial software companies did not see Photoshop’s perspectives. According to Story Photography, Thomas brought a copy of the program to Super Mac - a company that later became known for its Mac lineup and video cards, but the company already had a less functional Pixel Paint program that was more suitable for Mac Paint users than professional photographers. In the end, the company Barney Scan, producing scanners, released a program, although perhaps not in the form in which Thomas wanted it. ImagePro, which was renamed Photoshop due to trademark conflicts, came with Barney Scan scanners, and a total of approximately 200 copies of the program were sold.

It is fortunate that Thomas did not sell Photoshop Barney Scan, but only licensed it. The commercial distribution of the program has increased the possibilities of Thomas, which was reflected in his campaign in Adobe in September 1988. Adobe's creative department, led by Russell Brown, fell in love with the program, and they were not alone. The first version of the program was released in February 1990, and by the year 2000, more than 3 million copies had been sold, and most likely the product is being used on even more computers thanks to pirates.

Conclusion

The popularity and versatility of the program greatly influenced the business of Apple. Professional photographers crowded Power Macs, which cost $ 10,000, bringing Apple a huge profit. When Apple decided to hold positions in the home and workstations market, the graphics market, and mainly publishing, became very important. Lamar Potts, vice president of one of Apple’s divisions, told the press that his priority was to focus on “specialized market segments, such as the high-tech graphics market.” Even after Photoshop was ported to the Windows platform, Macs were the choice of professionals for their high performance when working with graphics.

Toolbar changes (for a new picture - thanks alammi ):


Original icons for the program that John Knoll drew: