A Photoshop Anniversary and the 'Creative Cloud'

[Chris Kern]

There's an interesting piece by Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times about the 25th anniversary of Photoshop and Adobe's marketing strategy for the "Creative Cloud."  Reportedly the latter has been working out well for Adobe, which, according to Manjoo, anticipates 6 million subscribers by the end of the year and annual subscription revenue of US$3 billion, roughly what the company made from selling boxed software in 2011.

The piece also discusses both the remarkable longevity and the sociology of Photoshop, if that's the right word, including it's having attained "the rare status of a product that became a verb — like Google and Xerox."  (Not to mention Jesse Rosten's outstanding spoof commercial.)

[Schewe]

CBS also aired a piece this morning http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/photoshop-marks-25-years-of-fine-tuning-pictures

[Schewe]

Actually, the Feb 19th, 1990 date is Thomas' "best guess" as to when Photoshop 1.0 actually shipped. It seems Photoshop 1 was so under the radar at Adobe, they couldn't actually find any documentation proving it was on the 19th. But I'll take Thomas Knoll's word for it!

BTW, Feb 19th has been an important date for digital imaging; Camera Raw 1 shipped Feb 19th, 2003 (at a Photoshop World in LA) and Lightroom 1.0 shipped Feb 19th, 2007. I was in Antarctica with Michael and we shot a video which I think is posted somewhere on LuLa–maybe Chris can insert a link?

[Kevin Raber]

I'll find that video and insert links with the Rantatorial we have posted. Look for it later tonight.

Kevin Raber

[Chris Kern]

CBS also aired a piece this morning http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/photoshop-marks-25-years-of-fine-tuning-pictures

I suspect I already know the answer to this, but are you at liberty to tell us which companies turned down the brothers Knoll before Adobe decided to buy Photoshop?

[Schewe]

I suspect I already know the answer to this, but are you at liberty to tell us which companies turned down the brothers Knoll before Adobe decided to buy Photoshop?

I really don't know other than Apple...in fact, John Knoll says that Photoshop was first pirated at Apple because he left a few disks there and it seems everybody at Apple ended up with it.

I suspect many of the companies are no longer in business any longer :~)

[David Eckels]

The piece also discusses both the remarkable longevity and the sociology of Photoshop,

It's an ecosystem

[Damon Lynch]

It's definitely sociological when Thomas Knoll says "Photoshop is a tool and like any tool it can be abused. A lot of stuff I’m not really happy with ... especially the body image issues that it creates for a lot of women."  Personally I don't respect that segment of the photographic industry one bit. So I think it's fantastic of Mr. Knoll to have highlighted this concern during the anniversary of Photoshop. And if a university didn't do so already, he should be awarded at least one honorary doctorate in recognition of his enormous contributions!

[AlanShaw]

Actually, Photoshop is turning 38, it just looks 25. 

[Ken Bennett]

Actually, Photoshop is turning 38, it just looks 25. 

And with a little work in, er, Photoshop, it could look 19.

[Simon Garrett]

It's definitely sociological when Thomas Knoll says "Photoshop is a tool and like any tool it can be abused. A lot of stuff I’m not really happy with ... especially the body image issues that it creates for a lot of women."  Personally I don't respect that segment of the photographic industry one bit. So I think it's fantastic of Mr. Knoll to have highlighted this concern during the anniversary of Photoshop. And if a university didn't do so already, he should be awarded at least one honorary doctorate in recognition of his enormous contributions!

I've been chuckling over Jesse Rosten's "Fotoshop by Adobé" since I came across it several years ago.  I daren't show it to the ladies of a certain age that I photograph, or I'd have to spend hours and hours on their photos.  

[digitaldog]

I suspect many of the companies are no longer in business any longer :~)

Let's start a list.

There was ColorStudio early on. In 1990, there were two products for this task, one was Photoshop, one was ColorStudio. CS was more advanced (had CMYK before PS) but a difficult UI and workflow. At the time, it was like the Nikon vs. Canon wars today. I'm pretty happy I decided on Photoshop back then, but for awhile, I wasn't sure I picked the right horse.

There was the Kurger brothers who totally ripped of the PS UI with X-Rez. We waited for a law suite but the company implode.

Before PS had layers, there was College which did nothing more than create layers to send back to PS.

There was Live Picture (who here paid the thousands to buy it?). Couple years later, it was bundled with scanners.

A product that never saw the light of day that I played with was SpectraPrint Pro from Joe Mintz and company. Super high end, Scitex like app that never got released as far as I know.