Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Apple Macintosh and Windows. Since developed in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll it has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing and digital art. Photoshop has become a generic trademark, in "to photoshop an image", "photoshopping". Photoshop has wide functionality: to edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models including RGB (Red, Green, Blue), CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black as used in printing), CIELAB, spot color, and duotone. Proprietary PSD and PSB file formats support these. In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop can edit or render text, vector graphics, 3D graphics and video.  "Plug-ins" (programs independently developed and distributed by third parties run inside Photoshop and offer new or enhanced features.

Thomas Knoll, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, wrote a program called Display on his Macintosh Plus to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. His brother John, working at Industrial Light & Magic encouraged Thomas to develop it into image editing program which they collaborated on. Thomas tried to rename the software ImagePro, but the name was already taken, so it became Photoshop. Initially there was a deal with scanner manufacturer Barneyscan to distribute copies with a slide scanner. John gave a demonstration of the software to engineers at Apple and Russell Brown, art director at Adobe. Adobe decided to purchase the license in September 1988. John worked on plug-ins while Thomas wrote the code. Photoshop 1.0 was released on February 19, 1990, for Macintosh exclusively. The handling of colour slowly improved and Photoshop the industry standard in digital color editing. At the time Photoshop 1.0 was released, digital retouching on dedicated high-end systems (such as the Scitex) cost around $300 an hour for basic photo retouching. The list price of Photoshop 1.0 for Macintosh in 1990 was $895.

Photoshop was initially only available on Macintosh. In 1993, Adobe chief architect Seetharaman Narayanan ported Photoshop to Microsoft Windows. so that it reached a wider audience. On March 31, 1995, Adobe purchased the rights for Photoshop from Thomas and John Knoll for $34.5 million.

Photoshop's naming convention was based on version numbers, from version 0.07 (codename "Bond"; double-oh-seven), through version 0.87 (codename "Seurat" which was the first commercial version, sold as "Barneyscan XP"), version 1.0 (February 1990) to version 7.0.1. Adobe published 7 major and many minor versions before the October 2003 introduction of version 8.0 which brought with it the Creative Suite naming.

Milestones are: Filters, Colour Separation, Virtual Memory (1.0), Paths, CMYK color (2.0), 16-bits-per-channel support, availability on Microsoft Windows (2.5), Layers, tabbed Palettes (3.0), Adjustments, Actions, Freeform Transform, PNG support (4.0), Editable Type, Magnetic Lasso and Pen, Freeform Pen, Multiple Undo, Layer Effects (5.0), Save For Web (5.5), Vector Shapes, revised User Interface (6.0), Vector Text, Healing Brush, Spell Check (7.0), Camera RAW (7.0.1).

In November 1996, Adobe released the Adobe Photoshop 4.0 bitmap graphics editor. Windows and Macintosh versions were launched simultaneously.

Adobe Photoshop 4.0 included new features such as adjustment layers, actions, navigator, guides & grids, free transform tool, multicolor gradients, 48 new special effects filters, digital watermarking, expanded web file format support (PNG, PDF, progressive JPEG), improved interface, and more.

Photoshop 4.0 codename was Big Electric Cat

"The world-standard photo design and production tool"

Adobe Photoshop 4.0 comprised 2x CD-ROM : Application CD-ROM (Macintosh); Tutorial CD-ROM (Macintosh &Windows)

Platform: Apple Macintosh  68030 or faster Power Macintosh 32Mb RAM CD-ROM  20Mb of available disk space mouse

               256 color Monitor

               Mac OS System 7.1.2 or later

Application Software (AS:) Graphics

Version: 4.0

Related Items in the Collection:

Beagle Graphics

Adobe Photoshop 2.0/2.5

Adobe Illustrator 5.0

Adobe Photoshop 3.0

Adobe Photoshop 3.0 (Bundle copy)

Macromedia Freehand 5.0 and 5.5

Dabbler 2

Adobe Photoshop 5.0

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