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The History of Photoshop
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:15 AM
from the cutting-and-pasting dept.
from the cutting-and-pasting dept.
Gammu writes "For the past fifteen plus years, Photoshop has turned into the killer app for graphics designers on the Mac. It was originally written as a support app for a grad student's thesis and struggled to find wide commercial release. Eventually, Adobe licensed the app and has sold millions of copies." Achewood's Chris Onstad also offers a different take of how it all went down.
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But Does It Run On Linux? (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:But Does It Run On Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:But Does It Run On Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:But Does It Run On Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the GIMP isn't supposed to be a professional-level graphics application. I think Paint Shop Pro is a better GIMP equivalent: an application designed for the advanced home user who needs something above MSPAINT but would never use more than 1/128th of Photoshop's feature set.
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"professional-level", what do you mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been ten years already that Clayton Christensen's book "The Innovator's Dilemma" was published. In that book he compared the evolution of several businesses, such as computer disk drives, excavating machines, and department stores.
The conclusion is that there is no fixed point separating "professional" equipment from "entry-level". Systems that are designed for amateurs or small businesses will evolve and become adopted more and more widely by professionals, until the old "professional-level" manufacturers go out of business.
What do the Gimp, Linux, 3.5 inch hard disks, and backhoe excavators have in common? They were created for amateurs, but are now used by many businesses. Perhaps there are some huge databases where 3.5 inch disks won't do and there may exist some mines where cable-actuated mechanical excavators are still used, but they are becoming less and less common.
If I were a Photoshop designer I would at least make an effort to learn how to use the Gimp. At least that seems the prudent thing to do.
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Re:"professional-level", what do you mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most equipment starts out as expensive, professional-grade products which percolate down to amateur-grade products. The first digital SLR was based on Nikon's then top-of-the-line F3 model and cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. Now, you can buy a point-and-shoot with a plastic lens for under $10. Likewise, ENIAC wasn't a desk toy, whereas the Bondi Blue iMac arguably is.
BTW, most large databases are stored on expensive RAID systems with equally expensive tape backups. No serious business ever used floppies to backup its important data.
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Most equipment starts out as expensive, professional-grade products which percolate down to amateur-grade products.
I don't know about "most", but there's a LOT of "ameteur" level equipment that "professionals" use as well. The microcomputer started out as a cheap calculator, and now it's replaced the mainframe. Linux started out as an experiment by a college kid, and now it's replaced big expensive Sun/HP/AIX boxes. The video toaster on the Amiga did a lot of eye-candy video stuff really cheaply that the
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They're all high-quality versions of previously existing products.
The first digital cameras were el-cheapo 35mm replacements. The first audio recording devices were essentially toys that just got better and better. And as for computers -- well, they're just an outgrowth of specialized adding machines.
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Yep, for sure.
A real professional would use whatever tool is available to get the job done. I'd certainly be wary of hiring a prima-donna who could only use one imaging product.
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"I know Photoshop, look at me, fuck your also-ran software."
Please.
I also don't buy the idea that someone can use Photoshop and not figure out how to do the same thing, in most cases, with GIMP. If you're really any good at your job, the tool doesn't matter as much as you make it out to.
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I find that CMYK and LAB support are both very important to me as a photographer, and I've never done any prepress work. For instance, I find CMYK useful for adjusting skin tones (see Dan Margulis' Professional Photoshop [amazon.com]) and for adjusting shadow detail with the K channel. I also like to use the K channel for channel blending.
Licensed? (Score:5, Informative)
The reason is obvious of course. Better for Johnny the budding graphics designer to get familiar with "'Shopping" than take the legal route and become familiar with the like of the Gimp, etc. Personally, I think Adobe themselves upload the lastest hacked copies of Photoshop to the usual places.
Re:Licensed? (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, the education price for Photoshop is $299. That's a lot of beer when you're a student with access to massive bandwidth...
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Gimp!=pro application (Score:5, Insightful)
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Eventually? (Score:5, Informative)
*sigh*
It's not like Adobe didn't put a LITTLE bit of work into it over the years, you know? They didn't just license it, they've - for all practical purposes - completely rebuilt it over and over. If they hadn't, that which they licensed would have been totally eclipsed by products like Corel's PhotoPaint, etc. CS3 has about as much resemblance to the initial product as
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I beg to differ. I haven't used 1.0, so i can't speak of that, but I have used Photoshop since 2.0, and I actually think that most of the core features I used most of the time have been there since then, and haven't changed much (or needed to change). Sure, there's a lot of new stuff, some of it very useful, a lot of it feature-bloat (but possible useful for someone else), but I'd say that may basic app
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Duh, thats why they also linked to a poorly drawn comic! You know to flesh it out. Although, to be fair they should have also linked to an interpretive dance video explaining some of the more complex IP issues.
Re:Eventually? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is sort of a shame, because the photoshop tools are a bit clumsy to use, and things like the selection tool could be implemented much better if they weren't afraid of alienating the existing customer base with changed behavior.
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Re:Eventually? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only has the front-end been rewritten several times, they've released the framework that they use [adobe.com] as open source.
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Lack of colour display (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe we would all be using Macs if they at least had a 16 or 256 colour display a few years earlier.
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Re:Lack of colour display (Score:5, Informative)
the Mac wasn't colour for many years
Huh? The Mac came out in 1984 and the color Mac II came out in 1987. I'd hardly call 3 years "many" and yes, the competition (Amiga, Atari ST) had color from the start (1985) and until VGA appeared for PCs in 1987, the state of color PC graphics (CGA, EGA) was poor, to say the least.
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A question for large print graphics designers... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was wondering why that is?
Is it because graphics designers who do large print are used to using Photoshop and do not see a point in switching to an unknown program?
Is it because there are no alternatives that have the features they need?
Are free programs such as the GIMP just not on par? I have used Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and GIMP but I don't really see why Photoshop is hallmarked as the best. That being said I am not a graphics expert so I was wondering if someone who is and used these programs for more then 5 minutes could give me a good answer.
Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Photoshop does a few things very well - much better than its competitors, that is manipulating photos in a way a photographer understands. In other areas, it falls behind PhotoPaint for example.
Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:5, Funny)
Do a slashdot search for any of the following terms, and you'll quickly be drawn into threads about why :
* GIMP;
* CMYK;
* Plugin xXx will do what you're looking for;
* But it won't do it in 32-bit colour with customized colourmap support unless you compile it yourself and since I use gentoo I'm still waiting for KDE to finish compiling;
* Yur momma is teh BOM in bed;
* Hitler used Photoshop;
* Suck a cock and die.
I always read those threads, mainly because I am interested in German history and human psychology. I couldn't give a rat's ass about Photoshop or graphic design.
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Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I do graphic design for a living, and there are a number of areas where The GIMP is lacking - but the big issue is in color space allowances. No CMYK support means no worky in the print world (unless your press uses RGB). I have to be able to not only convert an image to CMYK, but also control the colors to an extreme - I've had to remove all the color plates from the shot, increase the black plate to compensate, and then paint in spot red (for our press, that is 100% magenta, 50-60% yellow) over certain parts. Plus, the integration into the other parts of my work (working in InDesign/Illustrator for ads) is purely delightful.
Plus, CS2's RAW image importing is.. well.. I love it. Can't even begin to describe how great it is to use it's interface to import raw photos.
I still use the GIMP regularly - for minor stuff - at home. I still prefer my copy of Photoshop 6, though, for anything with any involvement.
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Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I like Gimp, but that plugin doesn't sound like it provides professional CMYK support. And it looks like the project is dead:
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Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:2)
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Questions like this are just begging to create an argument, but I'm going to give you my perspective. The primary advantage of using photoshop for me is familiarization. I'm not going to co
Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you that companies get really, really angry when their logo color comes out wrong. Sometimes you can blame the printer, but more typically it's the designer.
Adobe products do have quirks and some features do have steep learning curves, but they all do color extremely well and are very consistent.
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Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:5, Informative)
It handles type (CS2 and later) better than any competitor.
It allows vector-based postscript overlays.
It allows nearly unlimited undos (history palette)
It allows (CS3 and later) non-destructive filters applied on a per-layer basis.
Channel operations and masking are vastly superior to any competitor.
It works great on 8, 16 and 32 bit images in RGB or CMYK plus any RAW format variant you can throw at it.
It's functionally identical with an identical interface on Mac, Windows and SGI (remember them?).
It has brilliantly designed backward compatibility fallbacks written into the PSD format as they've appended to it over the years.
It has really amazing gif, png and jpg optimization routines built-in via save for web.
It's snappy, responsive and very thoughtfully laid out.
It runs natively on the Mac (instead of via X11), which happens to be where the majority of pro artists spend their time.
Bottom line is, it feels extremely organic to professional artists, has the best featureset, is installed on every freelance station you'll ever sit at, and it works straight out of the box with great documentation. It's the standard.
I check out Gimp, PaintshopPro or whatever about once a year to see how the most recent versions compare. They. Just. Don't. Not for real work, unless your time isn't worth anything.
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Re:A question for large print graphics designers.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not rubbish, it's how the industry works if you want enough control over your image to come out at a professional standard.
If you can't tell the difference, by all means, send RGB files and let the press operator use their best discretion in the conversion. I hold my work to a higher standard, and that's one thing that separates the pros from everyone else. We apply custom curves to give crushed, rich blacks (30%ish cyan mixed with 100% black or it will look weap and thin), we order matchprints, we look at our separations and we attend press checks.
Photoshop's default compression for gif, jpg and png all suck if you use Save As-> after manually indexing. Their save for web option, however, results in wonderful results if the image is suitable for the format you're trying to achieve.
Look, I've used the gimp a ton. I've used PS Pro a ton. For *basic* work, where color, workflow and clunkiness don't matter, they work as advertised. I'm not debating that. Lots of people can use either of those programs until the end of time because it fits their needs. I'm not debating that. But, what if I need to copy and paste? X11 to OS X? No go. Rough, rough, rough edges man. Basic functionality is missing without even breaching the high-end deficiencies.
If you work with RAW images, CMYK, are doing pro level retouching/compositing involving channel ops, detailed masking, fine selections, variable feathers on a selection, adding arbitrary spot color channels, working with HDRI... I could go on until the end of time, point being GIMP and PS Pro aren't even vaguely suitable for the task and Photoshop is an absolute joy to work with.
I guess the point I'm making is if you think GIMP does everything you want it to do, and you don't mind navigating the clunky interface, then great. You don't need Photoshop. It fits your needs.
It most certainly comes nowhere close to fitting mine. Let's agree to disagree on that point.
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Was this a plug for a really crappy comic? (Score:3, Insightful)
What did the Knolls Get? (Score:5, Interesting)
A considerable empire and fortune have been built around PhotoShop. Adobe had sold 3,000,000 coppies by year 2000. I presume they have sold about as much since. I wonder how the creators were rewarded and what they think of the monster. Here are some questions the article raises but does not answer:
I'm relatively sure they don't come around here and fanboy dis GIMP.
Re:What did the Knolls Get? (Score:4, Informative)
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http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ir?s=ADBE [yahoo.com]
Apple category? (Score:5, Funny)
Lets get real... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that adobe will admit rampant photoshop piracy has been the best thing that ever happened to them. The real reason they and other software leaders want to shut it down is that they don't any competitor taking that freeway to success. It is in the interest of market leaders to raise the bar to market entry as much as possible.
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Yeah, right. It had nothing to do with:
No, none of that had anything to do with Photoshop being successful. It was all a bunch of warez kiddies.
Seriously, get off the crack. The professionals using Photoshop were spending
Juarez... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why GIMP and $99 Pixelpusher don't cut it (Score:3, Interesting)
Graphic professionals usually quote the quality CMYK workflows as the reason why PS is better than the GIMP, but in reality the reason is quality alone.
The Adobe applications have, IMHO, amongst the highest quality of any apps I've ever seen out there. The apps consistenly produce the same quality results throughout the suite. The interfaces are very well thought out (the big changes in CS3 are the biggest in 7 years) and Adobe reserves a lot of time for quality control which ensures that when I use one of their apps in my job (I use almost all of them, PS, AI, ID, Acrobat), I can be fairly certain that they won't crash and that the results will be acceptable for print and the web. Added to that Adobe really pays a great amount of attention to detail, such as the quality of scaled images, which while many others support bicubic scaling these days, almost none do it with the same quality as PS does. And the list goes on.
There's nothing wrong with the GIMP and it is a bloody amazing tool all things considered. But someone would have to pay the GIMP contributors to spend more time taking care of details in the app to bring it up to PS' quality.
Re:MacPaint (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally different apps. Even the titles give this away: Photoshop DPaint. Photoshop didn't have a draw circle because it's not a drawing or painting application - you would use Freehand or Illustrator for that. Photoshop is for the manipulation of pre-prepared images, and it is unrivalled at this.
Of course, whether you actually need its power rather depends on your line of work. Personally, I don't. iPhoto and Graphic Converter are plenty for me, though I'm keeping my eye on Pixelmator [pixelmator.com] as well. However, those tools are fine for the kind of minor photo retouching I do. To do the full Photoshop workflow I'm not kidding myself - Photoshop has no serious competitor in its field.
Cheers,
Ian
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