Who doesn’t love Adobe’s Photoshop? It’s used for just about everything, including graphic design, marketing, personal photo editing, and more. But Photoshop is extremely long running software, meaning that it also has an extensive history. Here are a few interesting facts about the software that few have heard.
Formerly Display
Perhaps most fascinating is that Photoshop originally started life as Display. Upon first release Display had only a single purpose; to display images, hence the name. More to the point, these images weren’t even in colour. They were rendered as simple grey scale, which although revolutionary at the time would be laughable by today’s standards. It wasn’t until later, when numerous tools and design options were added, that Display became Photoshop.
Adobe Bought Photoshop For $300
The person that created Photoshop sold it for millions, right? Everyone knows that. Wrong. Photoshop was sold to Adobe for a mere $300. True, Photoshop wasn’t capable of much when it was sold, but you’d think the asking amount would have been a bit more. Either way, it wasn’t until after the software was sold that it really started to be expanded.
Jennifer In Paradise
Jennifer In Paradise is an extremely well-known image, at least for those familiar with computer history. If you’re not familiar the image might just seem like a nice photo of a lady on the beach. What makes the image legendary is that it was the first ever to be edited in Photoshop, in 1987. Courtesy of John Knoll, the image of his wife was imported into Photoshop and touched up.
Today, of course, Photoshop is used for everything, from editing family photos to designing the interface of the latest real money online casino South Africa loves to visit.
Changing The Dictionary
Photoshop is not just revolutionary for image design, it also happens to be among the few words that has altered human language. Photoshop is, of course, the name of editing software. But it is also now a commonly used verb. A person can be told to Photoshop an image, and they’d know exactly what that meant.
Open Source Software
The original code of Photoshop, now 32 years old, is completely open source. This means that everyone is allowed to download it, and may do with it what they please. It is available to download from the Computer History Museum website. Technically the code could be used to create a whole new version of Photoshop, at least if someone has 32 years of time and a great deal of talent.
Extremely Profitable
If it wasn’t already obvious, Photoshop brings in an absurd amount of money. In 2019 Adobe posted profits of around $2.99 billion. The company does have software other than Photoshop, but needless to say Photoshop was responsible for most of those profits. Not bad for software that started out displaying greyscale images 32 year ago.
Interesting Statistics
Lastly, Photoshop has shared some interesting statistics about how average users edit their photos. Statistics found that around 42% of girls want to be thinner, and 50% of boys would like darker hair.
Leave a Reply