Photoshop has come along way since version 1.0 hit our
desktops in the early 90 s, but the iconic toolbar remains.
The famous ‘Jennifer in Paradise’ image that John Knoll
used to demonstrate the capabilities of Photoshop.
The earliest version was named
‘Display’ and was soon changed to
‘ImagePro’. After Thomas took a six-
month break from his studies, he and
his brother developed the program into a
fully functional image editing application.
By then, the ‘ImagePro’ name had been
taken, so they settled upon ‘Photoshop’
instead. The piece of software was
distributed alongside hardware sold
by Barneyscan, which had created the
first high-quality, 2 4-bit desktop color
scanner. This way, the first 200 copies of
the Photoshop software had been sold.
The Knoll brothers presented their
software to Apple and Adobe, with Adobe
eventually purchasing the license to
distribute Photoshop in September 198 8.
Photoshop 1 .0 was released in February
1990 on Macintosh computers and came
with a host of features, including a color
correction facility with balance, hue, and
saturation, image output optimization,
curves, levels, and a clone tool. It also
featured the lasso tool, brush tool, and
magic wand. You could also change
the opacity and colors of sections from
an image. These features have always
HISTORIC IMAGE RETOUCHING
Back in the 19th century,
image manipulation was first
introduced as retouching.
This was a highly skilled and
time-consuming job that only
the richest of photographers
could afford to make slight
adjustments to their pictures.
This process remained
unchanged for a long
time, right at the start of
photography regardless of
the type of negative. After a
negative was exposed, it was
processed using chemicals in
the darkroom to develop and
then fix the resulting image.
To protect it from damage,
some photographers
varnished their negatives
while others retouched them
first and then preserved
them afterward. It was carried
out on a special table that had
an angled surface that you
could alter.
The negatives were shone
through from behind once
they had been placed inside a
frame on the angled surface.
These were shone through
using a reflective surface
or preferably an adjustable
mirror. To stop light shining
in, it had curtains running
down each side. The majority
of these manipulations were
on the negative side with
emulsion coated on it.
More detailed work
required the retouchers to use
a scalpel or a similar blade.
This etching was taken out by
experienced retouchers only
and was an extremely delicate
procedure. Etching was a
crucial part of perfecting
clients’ images for portrait
photography. Before starting
to edit, the negative had to be
prepared by polishing it with
pumice powder.
remained in the software and are still
as important to the graphic designers of
today as they were back then.
Of course, as well as having these
new manipulation tools, Photoshop also
worked well as a standard image editing
suite with the ability to adjust your image’s
values, and crop it too. Photoshop was a
great package to get anyone into the
editing side of photography, whether you
were just having some fun, perfecting
your images, or looking to start a career
using this new technology, it was the start
of something massive for everyone.
According to the Library of Congress, ‘Ulysses S. Grant at City
Point’ is a montage or composite of three different images and
does not actually show General Ulysses S. Grant at City Point.
A retoucher would focus
on lightening areas first
then darkening others, using
graphite pencils, ink, or
watercolors. A retouching
mixture was then applied.
In case of a mistake, this
dried layer could be easily
removed—a 1 9th-century
version of CTRL+Z.
HOL 2021 MAXIMUMPC 51
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