If you have never seen the first version of Photoshop — Photoshop 1.0 — in action, then this video by CreativeLive of Photoshop experts and professional photographers using the original software will make you glad you aren’t editing in the original program. Photoshop was created by Thomas and John Knoll in 1988 and released in February 1990, and if you’re a photographer who has been using the program for a while, you might remember when layers and non-destructive editing weren’t even a thing.
Photoshop versions released since have only improved over the past 26 years and has provided photographers and designers with incredible tools to create beautiful images and designs. Photoshop history has become one of the most integral parts in digital imaging, and since 1990, it has become the most quintessential image-editing software in the world. Photoshop isn’t just a software, it has entered our lexicon as a verb to describe editing photographs.
Although Photoshop 1.0 did have filters, levels, and basic editing tools, it was nothing like the program as we know it today. The video shows Dave Cross, Jared Platt, Ben Willmore, Chris Orwig, Julieanne Kost, Aaron Nace, Tim Grey, Matt Kloskowski, and Jason Hoppe, all trying to successfully edit their images. As you can imagine, they aren’t quite used to the limited capabilities of the first iteration.
Most of the photographers and editors in the video are surprised to see Photoshop levels as they try to adjust the histogram of their images. They find out that it isn’t quite as powerful and barely see any improvement as they try to adjust their histograms.
But what really made me laugh is when they all realized that they could only undo one edit at a time instead of being able to start over. I have to give big props to the men and women who had to edit in Photoshop 1.0.
After seeing this, I’m glad we’ve come this far with the current version of Photoshop and Lightroom…
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