of the phenomenon that would be known as Photoshop. The Birth of a Knoll’s program caught the attention of his brother, John, who Killer Application worked at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) in Marin County, California. ILM was the visual effects arm of Lucasfilm, the famous motion picture company founded by George Lucas. With the release of Star Wars, Lucas had proved that really cool special effects, combined with heroic characters and a “shoot-em up script,” could John Knoll produce a blockbuster motion picture. To that end, John was experimenting with computers to create special effects. He asked his brother Thomas to help him program hotoshop is the best selling a computer to process digital image pixel editing program on files, and Display was a great starting the planet. It is the point. So began their collaboration. standard of many industries John arranged to purchase a new and has been a huge revenue Macintosh II, the first color-capable source for Adobe Systems Inc. model, through his father, a professor But Photoshop’s beginnings at the University of Michigan. Before were humble, and if it weren’t it was shipped to his brother, Thomas for a tendency to procrastinate got hold of it and rewrote the code by a certain University of Michigan for Display to work in color. graduate student, Photoshop might In the ensuing months, Thomas never have been developed. and John worked on expanding Thomas Knoll Back in the fall of 1987, Thomas Display’s capability. At John’s Knoll, a doctoral candidate in com- urging, Thomas added the ability puter vision, was trying to write as a diversion from his doctoral to read and write various file programming code to display gray- work. Because it wasn’t directly formats, while John developed scale computer images on a black- related to his thesis, Knoll thought image processing routines that and-white bitmap monitor. The code it had limited value at best. would later become filter plug-ins. was called Display. Knoll wrote it Little did he know that this initial Thomas developed the unique on his Mac Plus computer at home code would be the very beginning capability to create soft-edged 16 • PEI • FEBRUARY 2000 program demo, he confided to Subsequently, John returned to someone that he was having Adobe for another demonstration. problems naming the program. The Russell Brown, Adobe’s primary art confidant suggested Photoshop, director, was blown away by the and that became the program’s program. He had just signed a non- working name. John started shopping around Photoshop 0.07 Splash Screen for a company to invest in Photoshop. He called on SuperMac, selections that would allow local but financial troubles there precluded changes. He also developed such any deal. Aldus was already working features as Levels for adjusting on something inhouse. Although tonality; Color Balance, Hue, and Adobe was interested, nothing Saturation for adjusting color, and could immediately be settled. painting capabilities. Thomas remained in Ann Arbor, In the summer of 1988, John Michigan, fine-tuning the program, thought they might have the basis while John traveled all over Silicon of a commercially viable product. Valley giving program demos. He Russell Brown Thomas was reluctant: “Do you kept pushing his brother to add have any idea how much work it is new features. John even wrote a disclosure agreement with Letraset, to write a commercial application?” simple manual to make the to view their new image editing he asked John. But with his naive program more understandable. program, ColorStudio. He was con- optimism, John convinced Thomas Finally he succeeded in attracting vinced that Photoshop was better. it would be worth the effort. “I’ll the attention of a scanner manufac- Timing is everything. With a figure out how to make money turer. Barneyscan decided that the great deal of enthusiasm, Adobe with this,” he told his brother. Well, program would be of use to people decided to buy the license to John was right, but so was Thomas. who owned their scanners. A short- distribute Photoshop. It was It did take a lot of work. term deal was worked out, and the September 1988 and the Knoll first public iteration of the software brothers and Fred Mitchell, head of was introduced as Barneyscan XP. Adobe Acquisitions, made the deal hen John saw an ad in About 200 copies of the program, with a handshake. It would be MacWeek for another now in Version 0.87, were shipped April before the final legal pixel imaging appli- with scanners. agreements were worked out. cation, PhotoMac, he The key phrase in that deal was became concerned. He “license to distribute.” Adobe didn’t went to the SIGGRAPH completely buy-out the program Conference (Special until years after Photoshop had Interest Group for the become a huge success. It was a Computer Graphics division of the smart move on the Association for Computing Knolls’ part to work Machinery) to investigate the new out a royalty agreement application. “We’ve got nothing to based upon distribution. worry about here,” he told Thomas. Photoshop 0.87 Splash Screen After the legal agree- PhotoMac lacked some of the ments were signed, major features of the Knolls’ Around this time, John demon- Thomas and John product. In fact, John was stunned strated the program to engineers at started developing a by how poorly its features were Apple computer. It was a huge hit. shipping version. implemented. They asked John to leave a couple Adobe decided to keep Thomas changed the name of of copies. There followed the first the working name their software several times. Each incident of Photoshop pirating. Photoshop. Thomas time he found one he liked, it had Seems that the engineers shared the wrote all the code for John Knoll’s early already been taken. Then, during a program with some friends. the application in Ann Photoshop icons. PEI • FEBRUARY 2000 • 17 Arbor, while John developed and additional engineers. They hired wrote plug-ins in California. Some Mark Hamburg, also a graduate of of the Adobe people thought John’s the University of Michigan, who features were gimmicky and didn’t had interviewed at Adobe the same belong in a serious application. month Photoshop 1.0 shipped. They viewed the product as a tool Mark had worked at Ashton Tate, for retouching, not special effects, where he implemented Bezier Paths so John had to find a way to “sneak” for Full Write. Paths was a feature them into the program. Those plug- Adobe wanted to add to Photoshop ins have become one of the most 2.0, and the company pegged Mark powerful aspects of Photoshop. as the Path Man for Version 2.0. Adobe Photoshop 1.0 shipped Between April 1989 and the on a single 800k disk. official release of the program early in 1990, development continued, with demo of Photoshop probably took no official beta testers. At Adobe, place at the Mac Summit in Santa Russell Brown and others worked Barbara in 1990. He had a knack for with the program and made sugges- making Photoshop seem easy and tions. Thomas would write and lots of fun, producing humorous then rewrite the code, while John, demos that showcased Photoshop’s Russell, and Fred pushed him to features. People who attended the add features. John was particularly demos spread the word about this good at coaxing Thomas to make really cool new product. improvements. Finally, in February Yet, clearly, Photoshop 1.0 needed 1990, Photoshop 1.0 shipped. more work. While Photoshop was Mark Hamburg easier to use, ColorStudio, which here were some early was developed by Fractal Design, Working with Thomas in Ann bugs in the program, and had some advanced features Photo- Arbor, Mark began development of most people ended up using shop did not. However, much to its Version 2.0 in Mountain View Version 1.0.7. Despite that, disadvantage, Letraset had positioned (Adobe’s first home). The major Photoshop was a hit, beating ColorStudio in a vertical market, features of 2.0 were to be a raster- the competition—most selling it as a specialized tool for izer for Illustrator files (Adobe’s notably ColorStudio—with specialized uses. vector-based application), support its well-written code and Adobe, on the other hand, for CMYK color, Duotones, and the easy-to-use interface. Photo- positioned Photoshop as an easy- Pen tool. Hamburg said his first shop had features that the others to-use tool for anybody with a Mac. real contribution to Photoshop was lacked, and the timing of the release MacWorld even published a shoot- to suggest raising the minimum was excellent: Just as the desktop out in an article about Photoshop RAM allocation from 2- to 4MB. and ColorStudio. John Knoll, Apparently, this little allocation working in Photoshop, and Marc bump greatly aided the stability Zimmer, of Fractal Design, working and performance of the program. in ColorStudio, produced a series Steven Guttman, now CEO of of retouching and compositing Halfbrain.com, became Photoshop’s tasks. Photoshop was seen as the first full-fledged product manager winner, although Zimmer com- Photoshop 1.0.7 Splash Screen plained that the test wasn’t fair— John was an artist while Zimmer publishing revolution was heating was “just a programmer.” With the up, Photoshop was there to take development and release of advantage of the growth. (Of course, Photoshop 2.0, Adobe was clearly you had to own an Apple computer.) becoming the industry standard. Adobe also had a secret weapon: Thomas Knoll had been the entire Russell Brown.