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DAY 322 | HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY |
Adobe Photoshop®
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
Image manipulation is nothing new; photo-trickery, airbrushing, and photo-compositing have been around for years. Still, the 1990 introduction of Adobe’s revolutionary software program Photoshop and 20 years of new incarnations, innovations, and additional products have completely changed the way we produce and look at images.
The initial impact of Photoshop was primarily in the professional world, where not just photographers but everyone from graphic designers and advertising agencies to architects, engineers, and even doctors now had a tool that quickly let them accomplish tasks that, in the past, required hours and hours, not to mention tremendous skill with complicated processes.
Today, even though we see photoshopped images everywhere, from magazines and billboards to movies and even missing-children notices, the biggest impact might be in the nonprofessional world, where almost anyone with a home computer can create and manipulate images or even original art. Speaking in anticipation of Photoshop’s 2010 20th anniversary, Adobe president and CEO Shantanu Narayen said, “Photoshop has played many different roles—it has given creative people the power to deliver amazing images that impact every part of our visual culture and challenged the eye with its ability to transform photographs. It’s no exaggeration to say that... Photoshop has changed the way the world looks at itself.”1 —DJG