The History of Photoshop

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.

Re:But Does It Run On Linux?

[Odiumjunkie]

Please let's not have another pointless "Is the GIMP a Photoshop replacement?" debate. They're about as pointless as an ostensibly professional-level graphics editing program without proper CMYK support.

Re:But Does It Run On Linux?

[setirw]

ostensibly professional-level graphics

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.

Re:A question for large print graphics designers..

[calc]

For one thing Photoshop has a lot of commercial plugins available for it. Generally when professionals say they use Photoshop they mean they use Photoshop and a lot of plugins that just aren't available for other graphics programs like GIMP.

Was this a plug for a really crappy comic?

[urbanriot]

I guess the itty bitty little article on the history of Photoshop was all right, but the linked comic really stunk. Aside from lousy grammar and poor sentence flow, it just wasn't funny.

Re:A question for large print graphics designers..

[Anonymous Coward]

The gimp lacks adjustment layers and other stuff that makes the workflow in PS easier. There's also the fact that ever increasing numbers of graphic artists learn from photoshop tutorials, they know which buttons to click but rarely understand the underlying concepts.

Nearly everything can be done in the GIMP (or cinepaint) if the operator knows what they're doing. If you are doing prepress, then Scribus [scribus.net] has excellent CMYK support.

The technical arguments are mostly bunk, the workflow issue isn't.

Re:Eventually?

[slart42]

[quote]CS3 has about as much resemblance to the initial product as ... well, it doesn't have much.[/quote]

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 approach to the program hasn't changed much between 2.0 and CS3. With the possible exception of layers (or where they around back then? I don't recall using those much back in the days).

Re:A question for large print graphics designers..

[SocialEngineer]

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.

Re:A question for large print graphics designers..

[Kwirl]

"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."

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 complicate things by explaining layering and color mode compatabilities, there are solutions to those. The key here is that I am lazy. I don't want to search for tools and addons and plugins that offer features that exists elsewhere in a standard installation.

My other reason for preferring photoshop is that if you use any of Adobe's other quality design programs, it is all familiar and often easily interchangeable. Illustrator, Premier, or even just making funny little animated pictures with ImageReady, I feel better using software that I recognize as part of a family. Its probably the same reason I prefer MS Office. See item #1 about being lazy.

"professional-level", what do you mean?

[mangu]

...pointless as an ostensibly professional-level...

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.

Re:Licensed?

[__aajqwr7439]

I would also consider Adobe's student pricing at the time Photoshop was beginning on the road to domination. The last time I was in school (maybe 15 years ago), I was able to purchase Photoshop (2.0 or 2.5, I believe) for about $40. Pretty affordable, even for a grad student. That pricing had to help its widespread adoption.

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...

DN

Re:"professional-level", what do you mean?

[setirw]

What do digital cameras, high-spec computers, and audio recording devices have in common? They were created for professionals, but have now permeated the amateur market. Perhaps there are some professional photographers who regularly use dinky point-and-shoot cameras for work and there may exist some animation studios where Celerons with 64mb RAM are still used, but they are becoming less and less common.

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.

Re:"professional-level", what do you mean?

[ozmanjusri]

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.

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.

Re:Eventually?

[jsebrech]

The basic toolbox in photoshop 1.0 is not that far removed from the one in photoshop CS3. You can see the lineage. Maybe the back-end is completely new, but the front-end has merely expanded.

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.

Lets get real...

[shaitand]

The warez scene made photoshop popular. Remember back in the land of dial up where you searched through dozens of websites to find a few that had working links to applications? Back then, there were dozens of warez webmasters competing for the coolest apps and Photoshop 4 was in vogue. This was significant because all those warez runners then used photoshop to make cool graphics for their sites. Other sites drooled and so photoshop spread. As the piracy grew so did the rep, as the rep grew so did the legitimate user base.

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.

Re:"professional-level", what do you mean?

[DarkVader]

But digital SLRs weren't the first digital cameras. The early ones were toys, not anywhere near usable for professional photography.

ENIAC may not have been a toy, but the vacuum tubes it used started out as toys, not tools. The transistors replaced the tubes started out in cheap radios, and integrated circuits were used in toys very early on.

The expensive RAID systems in use today are not using specialized hardware for their drives, they are using the same drives home computers do. And almost nobody is using celerons with 64MB RAM any more, but you're more likely to still find one still in use in a business than as someone's home computer.

And audio recording started with the wax cylinder phonograph. It was not a professional technology.

Juarez...

[MsGeek]

Just so y'all know, Photoshop Elements does about as much as most casual users of Photoshop need, and it's less than a Benjamin. /me is waiting for the next version of Elements which will be a Universal app based on CS3. Currently Photoshop Elements is at v.4 for Mac and v.5 for Windows. It currently has to run under Rosetta with MacIntel which makes Baby Jebus cry.

Re:A question for large print graphics designers..

[daeg]

When you are working on a $7,500 contract producing media that will cost the client over $50,000 to print you don't trust your color profiles to some unknown program.

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.

Re:A question for large print graphics designers..

[vrt3]

Some quotes from that page:

"A plugin providing rudimentary CMYK support for The GIMP"

"this is experimental software"

"This plug-in goes some small way towards rectifying the situation"

I like Gimp, but that plugin doesn't sound like it provides professional CMYK support. And it looks like the project is dead:

The plugin is unfinished, but usable for its primary purpose, and since I'm unlikely to have time to develop it further in the near future, I'm releasing it as is.

Gimp!=pro application

[mojoNYC]

Obviously, you come from outside the pro graphics world--the GIMP lacks basic functionality (such as CMYK colorspace for one), and is simply not ready for prime-time in this arena. In other words, if Johnny takes the Gimp route, he's going to find himself dealing with a bunch of issues that may be fun for geeks to overcome, but in this case, would take him away from the real task of image editing, unencumbered by software limitations. Photoshop is expensive because it's the best of breed by a wide margin, and Adobe knows it.

Re:"professional-level", what do you mean?

[CastrTroy]

But that doesn't mean he shouldn't be aware of how to use GIMP. It would be like a programmer who could only program if he was using Visual Studio Team Fortress Edition (or whatever it's called). I wouldn't hire a programmer who couldn't get the job done with notepad and a command line compiler. Sure the tools are available, but if you want to whip something up in an unfamiliar computing environment, you often don't have all the "professional" level tools available, so you should be able to do a pretty good job with lesser tools. Even though it's 2007 and we have laser guided mitre saws, I would still expect that a carpenter could build stuff using a mitre box and a hand saw.

Re:MacPaint

[mccalli]

Thing is that I find funny, that its taken 8 versions to have a Draw Circle Tool in Photoshop...The Amiga Dpaint had that from Day one.

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

Re:"professional-level", what do you mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Uh.. That's a neat statement, but why exactly? The design industry is not going to go open source. The GIMP is amazing for what it does but it's not suitable for professional use, particularly when it comes to CMYK output. This can't be compared to OpenOffice's ability to replace Word in nearly every office or classroom; Photoshop simply does many extremely critical things that the GIMP cannot.

Besides, if GIMP were to improve and become the standard in the industry (which I suppose could happen, say, if Abode were to... Well, I can't come up with an example but let's say it's discovered that Abode CS3 makes computers randomly explode) then most able designers should be able to make the switch quickly. It's not a new programming language, it should not be difficult for a pro to be able to learn to do what they need quickly-- possibly even "learning by doing." If they can't do that, then GIMP is flawed.

It's all well and good to support GIMP, and I would think many pros would play with it out of curiousity, but it is not "prudent" that they do so. I'm not slamming the app itself (which I heartily support) but I do take issue with your decree, which if I may say is pure B.S., and has more to do with you pushing the Slashdot OSS agenda than understanding what pro designers need.

Re:Eventually?

[DDLKermit007]

You apparently never used PS1. Up until 3.0 there were no layers, single undo up till 5.0 (single layer + single undo up till 3.0 took some SERIOUS skill), and other improvements as time went on. Now if you want to talk about an app thats seen next to no improvement over time, look at Illustrator. I started with 3.0, and really haven't seen that huge of a leap in new features. Vector art really doesn't get too whiz-bangy, but I keep upgrading just to be able to read other people's files. Bah...Microsoft 101 right there.

Re:Gimp!=pro application

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1990s called and they want their troll back. Plenty of professionals can and do work in RGB. More and more of the content that is being generated today is showing up on LCD monitors rather than in print. Magazines, journals, and newspapers are losing subscribers and/or moving their subscriptions online. Unfortunately, your webpage shows neither a portfolio nor your list of projects/clients, so I'm unable to ascertain as to whether gimp might work for your work. But it can feed many designers.

Also: GIMP does have LIMITED support for CMYK & there are certainly other applications that you can use that are much less expensive than PhotoShop that support CMYK if that is what is holding you up.

PhotoShop is expensive & has many customers because of effective branding and marketing. Many people who use PhotoShop (amateurs and professionals) could do just fine without photoshop & professional designers have existed far longer than either PhotoShop or GIMP & the profession will outlive either tool.

Utter bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Good people will always do better work with bad tools than bad people can do with good.

Would you refuse to employ a carpenter if he didn't use a certain brand of wood saw?

You're the zealot.

Re:A question for large print graphics designers..

[dr00g911]

CMYK matters if anything you work with is ending up in print. On a press. Period. It also matters if files you receive for electronic images come to you in CMYK format. Like if you receive images that have been used in a professional capacity and need to adapt them for web use. Let's not even talk about hexa- or septachrome workflows.

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.

Re:Gimp!=pro application

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...yeah.

16-bit support please? Plug-in support? LAB color mode? A decent file browser? DNG support? QuickTime and Automator and ColorSync and OpenType and a native UI? Non-square pixel support?

If you put 500 people on the Mac (my platform of choice thanks) and had them compare Photoshop and GIMP side-by-side, which program do you think would be selected by most of those 500?

Photoshop kicks GIMP's ass up down sideways and back again.

For a professional user, it is well worth the investment which is why most design houses and pro photographers use it.

Re:But Does It Run On Linux?

[Guido von Guido]

Which as you know is only needed for prepress work.

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.

Re:Lets get real...

[dangitman]

Yeah, right. It had nothing to do with:

• Photoshop being a generally kick-ass,revolutionary application
• The shift in the publishing industry from cut-n-paste and darkrooms to imagesetters and electronic publishing
• The rise of "desktop publishing"
• The massive amounts of money spent in the advertising and publishing industries

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 huge bucks on their equipment. Doing things digitally meant saving a ton of money, while producing better quality work more quickly. This in turn meant they made huge bucks by investing in Photoshop. A print shop or pre-press house routinely spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on high-end hardware. Even though a Mac system with Photoshop and Quark was considered "expensive" in the consumer PC world, they were screaming bargains in the land of serious publishing. Even a self-employed photographer spends a lot more money on cameras, lenses, studio space and lights than on Photoshop.

Kids using pirated copies of Photoshop to use tacky filters or make photo composites barely register on the map. If it were all about warez, then why has Photoshop consistently had support for professional-level imaging workflows? If it was all about warez, how did Adobe grow to such an enormous size on the back of Photoshop, if nobody was paying for it?

Photoshop is popular because it became an industry standard, and also because it was one of the most revolutionary pieces of software ever written. It changed entire industries. Warez kiddies were just jumping on the bandwagon. It's more accurate to say that Photoshop was popular on warez sites, because it was THE application to own in the professional world, not the other way around.

Re:Gimp!=pro application

[drew]

I think you missed the point. If Adobe wasn't so incredibly lax on the rampant piracy of Photoshop, programs like The Gimp, and many of Photoshop's one time competitors that long ago faded into oblivion, would probably be a lot more advanced, because there would be real incentive to work on them. As it is, anyone who wants a copy of Photoshop can get it without hardly trying, and Adobe still rakes in the bucks because any significantly large company knows better than to get caught with their pants down on software licensing.

Re:"professional-level", what do you mean?

[fishboy]

Imply what you like, but GIMP most certainly isn't on the radar for anything serious. Most designers have never even heard of it. GIMP is like the Microsoft Access of graphic design as far as usefulness goes. Of course one can figure it out, we learn new software almost every day, but what would be the point? It lacks so many fundamental features, like a CMYK workspace, which is essential for printers, for it to be useful.

If you're really any good at your job, the tool doesn't matter as much as you make it out to.

I think you have a fundamental lack of understanding about the design industry. I am good at my job, and I know it can't be done with anything else, not at the moment anyway. If there were alternatives, people would be using them. The Adobe CS is just so ingrained in the graphic design workflow that replacing it is going to take a lot of doing, perhaps even a paradigm shift. GIMP has its place, but not as part of a professional design suite.

Ask a carpenter to build a house with a handsaw instead of a skil saw and they'll tell you it just isn't worth it, there's no money to be made there.