Where did Photoshop come from?

Along with the 2gb memory cards, multi card reader, Epson Stylus Photo 1400 A3 printer, shiny new Canon Digital Rebel XT / Nikon D80 / Pentax K20d / Olympus E-400 / Sony A100 (delete as appropriate) image editing software, whilst maybe not a required item, is something that most SLR Digital Photographers will use on a regular basis.

The choice of software is not massive, and there are some gems along with some real dogs too!

Standing at the top of the list, certainly for the pro end of the Digital Photo Editing arena is Adobe.

Photoshop has been Adobe's flagship image editing software has been around under the name of Photoshop since the early 90's. Photoshop's roots go back to around 1987 when in Thomas Knoll, student at the University of Michigan, wrote a program to display grayscale images on a blackand white display.

Taking a break from his studies Thomas took a six month break from his studies renamed the application ImagePro and worked with his brother to improve the features.

Later that year Thomas renamed the program Photoshop and struck a deal with scanner manufacturer (Barneyscan) to distribute copies of the program with their slide scanner; around 200 copies of Photoshop were shipped this way.

Whilst Thomas worked on the application John gave a demonstration of the program to engineers at Apple Computer Inc. and to Russell Brown, art director at Adobe. Both demonstrations proved hugely successful with Adobe agreeing to purchase the license to distribute Photoshop in September 1988.

Adobe Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990 for Macintosh exclusively.

If you've not yet taken the plunge into digital image editing software, then we'd highly recomend taking Photoshop on a test drive, if the cost is to high to justify purchasing Photoshop then an excellent alternative is Photoshop Elements.

Photoshop Elements carries many of the main features found in it's bigger brother, yet is a fraction of the price. Another advantage is the shallow learning curve required for Photoshop Elements. Adobe have produced a lightweight, easy to use, intiative piece of software that almost any computer user should be able to get up and running with in no time at all.

To help you along with your purchase we have collected below a list of superb offers and vouchers from Adobe - to take advantage of these offers please click through the links below to get to the offer pages on Adobe's web site.

Offers:

Save up to US$150 when you buy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software together with Photoshop CS3 - Click here

Free shipping on all UK orders over £300 (UK only) - Click here (offer ends 29th Feb)

Add Acrobat Professional to your cart, and then Photoshop Elements 5, and the discount will be reflected in your cart. - Click here