Soviet Image Editing Tool From 1987

nacturation writes "Three years before Photoshop 1.0 was released, computer engineers in the USSR were already retouching photographs using some surprisingly advanced technology. A video shows how the Soviets went about restoring damaged images with the help of rotary scanners, magnetic tape, and trackballs. No word on whether this technology was used to fake moon landings or put missiles in Cuba." Photo manipulation in the USSR (and elsewhere) had a pretty good jump on computers, though.

Er... yeah... and ?

[MouseR]

Earlier in the late 70s and early 80s, people around the globe used Crossfield and Hell drum scanners to retouch photos. Yeahs before computers were able to do it.

I had pieces of a Hell drum scanner in my office in 1988 when I was building an image correction software to control it. By then, ImagePro had already been doing this for a couple of years, on computers.

Re:BT, DT

[Anonymous Coward]

Deluxe Paint preceded Photoshop 1.0 by 5 years...

from comments there

[JustFisher]

It's not Soviet , it's French ! It's a PERICOLOR-1000 system with a software translated to Russian. They used to buy hardware and software in the West and change it a bit(translate) and present it as one developed internally in some scientific institute. Here is the discussion in Russian: http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/history/107465/ [habrahabr.ru]

Re:Er... yeah... and ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about the Dainippon Screen drum scanners and systems like the Sigmagraph 2000

1981 The company's first electronic page makeup system, the Sigmagraph 2000, is introduced. This system is the forerunner of Dainippon Screen's subsequent page makeup systems.

http://www.screenusa.com/history.cfm?section=5

In fact it is French PERICOLOR-1000 Software

[Elixon]

One of the Russian comments points out that the software is in fact French PERICOLOR-1000 translated to Russian.

What about Quantel?

[gilesjuk]

Quantel Paintbox beats them both, it was first launched in 1981!

Quantel sued two companies, one of them being Adobe but didn't win the Adobe case, largely due to the existance of Superpaint, who's author testified in the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantel_Paintbox [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpaint [wikipedia.org]

Re:from comments there

[NJRoadfan]

The computer they are using to control it to the right is an Apple /// with what appears to be a standard Roman layout keyboard. The floppy sleeve is covering the logo, heavens forbid they show they are using Western technology! I don't think the Russians would have bothered to clone that machine (which arguably was about as reliable as anything the Soviets made), they did clone the Apple II series though.

Re:Stalin was having people edited out for years..

[aekafan]

The Gulag Archipelago [amazon.com] by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. Can't think of of a better citation than this. Or search for the NKVD. Their specialty was airbrushing history. Oh, and shooting political enemies of the state in the head.

Authoritarian tyrants are much the same whether their guise is communism, national socialism, or democracy. The best way to make people forget about enemies of the state is to not talk about them.

Re:In fact it is French PERICOLOR-1000 Software

[estestvoispytatel]

Up to mid-60s there was some quite good domestic computers in the USSR, but almost all of the developing teams (spare some military projects) were switched to, well, copying of the three unified systems from the West, mainly because Politburo's dumbfucks were educated not enough to effectively direct and support R&D. You know, command economy has no natural feedback and very skewed competition.

Re:Stalin was having people edited out for years..

[AhabTheArab]

"Citation needed" usually gets on my nerves, but in this case, I must say to you: WOOOSH!!

Tip: If you're able to provide documentation of a person or event being "written out of history", then they weren't written out of history.