February 19, 1990: Adobe Systems ships the first commercial version of its soon-to-be-iconic Photoshop photo editing software. The Photoshop launch, exclusively on the Macintosh, gives users powerful new tools for tweaking digital images.
The groundbreaking software debuts for Mac System 6.0.3. Priced at $895, Photoshop will quickly become the standard editing tool for graphics professionals. Whether they work for advertising agencies, news organizations — or, frankly, anywhere else — Photoshop users take advantage of the program’s digital darkroom tools to seamlessly manipulate images.
Photography will never be the same.
Photoshop launch: From ILM to Adobe
When Adobe Photoshop arrived, it was a niche tool for graphics pros that let users erase blemishes, composite layers and tweak tones in ways that were once the domain of darkrooms and skilled photo retouchers.
But the legacy of that Mac-only software isn’t just about creative liberation. It’s also about the beginning of a profound change in our visual culture. Adobe’s powerful tool made it easy for anyone to blur the line between real and altered images. And that legacy lives on today, from impossibly glossy product shots to the generative deepfakes and other AI-spawned imagery that flood our social feeds and challenge our trust in what we see.
The origin of Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop itself took a strange route to commercial domination, developed by brothers Thomas and John Knoll.
Thomas Knoll began developing the software as a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan in 1987, three years before the Photoshop launch. Discovering that his Macintosh Plus computer would not display grayscale images correctly, he started coding a program to help.
Thomas’ brother John ran the special effects department at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic. Together, they developed Thomas’ brainchild into an image-editing program they called Display. They later renamed it Image-Pro, then Photoshop. The Knolls completed the first alpha version, Photoshop 0.63, in October 1988. However, they never released that version to the public.
Adobe Systems purchased the program, then released it in February 1990 as Adobe Photoshop, a standalone software application. Once Photoshop hit the mass market, it changed image editing forever.
Photoshop launch on Mac changes the image-editing game
Compared to today’s Photoshop, version 1.0 seems, unsurprisingly, quite primitive. Still, the Photoshop launch represented an enormous leap forward compared to other graphics applications available at the time. Version 1.0 boasted revolutionary tools like the Lasso and Magic Wand, which made it easy to select and copy image elements.
Much like the concerns about AI-generated deepfakes today, Photoshop woke people to the ways in which computers could be used to manipulate images. In 1990, the year Adobe released Photoshop 1.0, photography critic Fred Ritchin wrote:
“[As] the public begins to perceive photography as unreliable, those who control its uses should clearly understand what they are doing to a photograph. They should address both the question of image manipulation by the computer and the more general tendency to use photographs to illustrate preconceived ideas and self-fulfilling prophecies.”
For a fun trip down memory lane, check out this InfoWorld article about the Photoshop launch from early 1990. It compares Adobe’s software to the other advanced graphics editor of the time, Letraset’s ColorStudio.
The piece does a good job of summarizing just what a game-changer Photoshop was at the time. Even if, as the author noted, it was “a fairly big program … [taking up] about 2 megabytes.”
Adobe donated the source code for Adobe Photoshop 1.0 to the Computer History Museum in February 2013.
Photoshop sets a new standard
In the years that followed the Photoshop launch, the software became a standard application for anyone who works with graphics. Today, more than two dozen versions later, Adobe sells Photoshop as subscription software and bundles it into its Creative Cloud suite. And the iPad version of Photoshop continues to add desktop-class features.
Other image editors — including Pixelmator Pro, which is part of the Apple Creator Studio software bundle — rose to challenge Adobe’s groundbreaking software over the years. However, Photoshop remains the gold standard for many people. (For more info, read Cult of Mac’s buying guide: Apple Creator Studio vs. Adobe Creative Cloud: Which creative suite should you choose?)
All that creative image manipulation started with the Photoshop launch on the Mac on this day in 1990.
Do you remember the Photoshop launch? Did you use Photoshop 1.0 back in the day? What are your memories of this game-changing piece of software? Let us know in the comments below.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
One response to “Today in Apple history: Photoshop debuts as a Mac exclusive”
It was March or April of 1990 when I purchased my first copy (1.0.7) of Photoshop at the Egghead computer store on Beverly Blvd. Ran it on a Mac IIci with 8MB of RAM and a lovely Apple 13-inch color display. Had to read the manual (RTFM) as that was the only way to learn the app back then. It was actually a very good manual!