Two brothers, one with an interest in photography and computer programming, the other a movie special effects pioneer, invented a programme to digitally process images. Twenty-five years later the design, photography and any other profession is impossible to imagine without Photoshop.
It was John Knoll, the special effects man, who had the revelation after witnessing some preliminary experiments in digital processing of movie images at the company where he worked. “If we convert the movie footage into numbers, and we can convert the numbers back into movie footage, then once it’s in the numerical form we could do anything to it. We’d have complete power,” he told his brother Thomas.
On Adobe’s blog Thomas Knoll recalls the birth of Photoshop, explaining how the idea of combining several image processing tools into one programme was born and how he came up with the idea of layers. The web and inkjet printers democratized the programme by reducing the output costs to virtually nil.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Photoshop, WDCD-friend Adobe asked artists from all over the world to contribute their most amazing dreams – and their working files with layers. These documents were then animated layer by layer to create the film made in Photoshop that goes with this post.
Also follow Adobe’s 25 under 25 search for the most creative young visual artists who will show the world what the next generation of Photoshop artists is made of.