First released in 1990 for the Macintosh Platform, Photoshop 1.0 turned 25 years old last month. To mark the occasion, CreativeLive asked eight Photoshop professionals to try to do their jobs — on camera, of course — on the original 1.0 version of Photoshop.
Spoiler alert: they didn’t have an easy time. “Only one level of Undo? No live preview? Is this even real life?”
It’s a funny video, but strangely, I think my takeaway is different from the eight Photoshop professionals who actually had to go through the ordeal. While they can only see the differences, I can only see the similarities. What amazing to me about Photoshop 1.0 is just how functional and fully-formed it seems, 25 years later.
Sure, the 1.0 version is slower, it’s not as fully-featured, and it’s technically not as advanced: but the interface and functionality of Photoshop have largely gone unchanged in 25 years. These Photoshop pros might have been frustrated by how long it took them to do their jobs, but they could still do them.
For me, these are all tell-tale signs of a classic design. Photoshop 1.0 was a genius piece of software, with a timeless design that Adobe got right the first time around. Yes, it’s changed over 25 years, but that first version is as timeless as the Mac it’s running on. That’s why Adobe is the Apple of graphic design.
Source: YouTube
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
10 responses to “What it’s like to use Photoshop 1.0 on a vintage Mac, 25 years later”
Respectfully disagree. Feels like we didn’t see the same video. In the one I saw, almost none of them could finish a project resembling anything usable today, and almost all of the useful features were missing. Their results were quite literally frankenstein creations. Having a similar ‘looking’ tool selection on the left side does not equal having the same features or power.
As powerful ps was for it’s time, even for a first version, having one level of undo and no layers renders it next to useless. Granted, a few versions inn and this would have been a different story.
Adobe did not write, create, design or name Photoshop 1.0. Adobe bought it from a developer. I used the first pre-1.0 version form the original developer. Someone at Adobe should find his name and give him full credit for the design, not just list him in the lizard of developers, maybe its Thomas at the top of the list. When I first used Photoshop many of the tools were grayed out because they were not finished yet but it was the same as the final release.
Chuck Burr
Ashland, OR
I’m begging you to upload a profile pic of yourself
knolls!
Thomas Knowl I think is the name you’re looking for.
given the opportunity to learn the program they would do fine. or at least do better with 2.5!
I used version 1.0 of Photoshop on a Mac Classic with a fax machine hooked up to ‘scan’ my cartoon as a fax resolution tiff, adding color when I purchased my first color Macintosh, a Mac IIx I bought used for $1,300 and brought back to life shoving chewing gum between the memory chips… On my website are a bunch of examples of fine art I scanned in pieces, put together in Photoshop 1.0 with ONE undo and NO layers… It was very hard work, but far from a ‘useless’ program – it was astonishing. Groundbreaking. And the first widely shared software ever…
I started with Photoshop 2 which came on about 10 floppy disks, running on my original Mac SE/30 with its 9=inch black and white screen. I remember it being revolutionary and completely amazing on how I was able to do so much retouching and image manipulation. Thomas Knowl was the chief architect of Photoshop and he did a fantastic job. I also started with Adobe Illustrator 88 in 1989. Both of these programs have changed my life and made my business possible.
The look and feel of the original Photoshop was a direct ripoff of Apple’s original MacPaint. Same icons for the same functions. How groundbreakingly original. And is was written mostly in Pascal, some bits in Assembly.
I’ve installed Photoshop before now but never used it much. Paint Shop Pro was always my go-to back in the 90s when I used a PC. There are so many alternatives about, Pixelmator, Gimp etc. spring to mind, it begs the question: OK, Adobe brought a product to market many years ago but why keep harping on? You don’t owe Adobe anything. Unless they are paying you, why promote them in this day and age?