According to foreign media reports, February 20 this year is the 20th anniversary of the launch of the famous image processing software Photoshop. Pamela Pfiffner, a well-known American writer, editor and consultant, wrote an article on the IT website Macworld, reviewing the 20 years of development of Photoshop software and its impact on people's lives.
The following is the full text of Pamela Pfiffner’s article:
Adobe Photoshop has now penetrated into every aspect of our digital lives. It may be hard for you to believe that this software was only born 20 years ago. Over the past 20 years, Photoshop has changed the way we understand the world, perceive reality, and express ourselves.
Looking around, almost all the pictures we see, whether they are advertisements, bulletin boards, or pictures in newspapers and magazines, use Photoshop to a greater or lesser extent. Photoshop's influence is so great that photoshop has become a verb, which means editing and modifying digital pictures.
Who could have imagined that this software, originally written just to handle a doctoral thesis, would have such a big impact. When brothers Thomas and John Knoll wrote the software now known as Photoshop, they thought it should be something more than just their personal pastime. space, so they started looking for investors to invest. However, most Silicon Valley companies are not optimistic about this software and refuse to invest. Eventually, Barneyscan, a small developer of slide scanners, agreed to a short-term licensing contract. The Photoshop software at that time was named Barneyscan XP, and only about 200 units were sold, but it was the first commercial connection between this software and the photo industry. Today, Photoshop fans are proud to have used or even owned Barneyscan XP. The official version number of this product is Photoshop 0.87.
However, in the end, Adobe took a fancy to Photoshop, purchased the copyright of Photoshop without hesitation in 1989, and launched Adobe Photoshop 1.0 in early 1990. At first, this software was only launched for Apple Mac computers, so it also became the platform's flagship product. One of the first "killer apps".
Photoshop has been exploring its development direction in its early stages of development. Although Photoshop is powerful and can do everything from digital graffiti to pre-printing typesetting, it has no development focus. Users seem to feel the same way. Adobe claims that Photoshop is so feature-rich that most users only use 5% of its features.
Although Photoshop has many other great features, editing photos has always been a centerpiece of it. The Noel brothers' father was an amateur photographer. In his father's darkroom, Thomas learned the basics of composition, which eventually became the core of Photoshop. As Photoshop develops, its market continues to expand. As scanners and negatives gradually transition to digital, the equipment for producing digital pictures becomes more and more advanced and has more and more functions. More and more photographers realize the potential of Photoshop, and under their promotion, they process digital photos. Became the main task of Photoshop.
Today, Photoshop has a huge impact. It can restore old photos and help us preserve history; it can improve the quality of scientific and medical images, help us exchange important information and gain a deeper understanding of the real world; it can create some unprecedented graphics and colors, thus Create an ideal world for users. Of course, it also gives us the ability to modify and enhance photos. Because of this, it also challenges our senses and makes us doubt that "seeing is believing." This is the beauty of Photoshop. Of course, the ability to modify photos is a double-edged sword. There are many misleading examples in this regard. What is even more disturbing is that Photoshop can also be used to modify real events and affect our sense of right and wrong.
As Photoshop enters its third decade of development, let's celebrate the beneficial changes this software has brought to our lives. Let's focus on the noun rather than the verb photoshop. Let's pay homage to the true essence of the most popular photo editing software. Nowadays, with just a few mouse clicks, you can adjust the brightness of a picture to make the sky bluer and the face brighter. With just a few tweaks, you get not just a photo, but a historic moment exactly as you saw it with your own eyes. This is indeed amazing!
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