The History of Adobe Photoshop

One could argue that the ideas for Photoshop were first born in a darkroom, where photographers have been using layers of negatives, and subtle changes in light to enhance and manipulate images since the first days of film photography. However, the computer program, Adobe Photoshop, began in 1987 with Thomas Knoll’s idea of being able to use a monochrome monitor to display grayscale images. Later, becoming a full scale image editing software, it was called ImagePro. Later renamed Photoshop, Adobe purchased the rights to the program and released it for Macintosh in 1990. In 1992 it was released for the Microsoft Windows platform. It wasn’t until 1994 that Adobe released a version of Photoshop with the ability to use Layers, a function that has made Photoshop the definitive software for image enhancement and manipulation.

Photoshop has continually developed, adding plug-ins, filters, and advanced image editing techniques. Recently, a budget priced, dumbed down version of Photoshop entitled Photoshop Elements was released in response to many other companies releasing low priced image editing software that promises to compete with many of the simpler functions that Photoshop performs. However, there is no current program that can compete with Photoshop’s ability to perform complex image editing, enhancement, and manipulation.

Today, Photoshop is still used by professional photographers. However, its reach has continually grown into other fields. Many novices use Photoshop for pleasure. Also, it is a popular software for graphic designers, architects, and film makers among others. As Photoshop continues to grow, image editors everywhere will be waiting to see what the folks at Adobe can come up with next.