A look at Photoshop’s 25 years of print perfection

Whether you’re a photography purist who believes images are best left untouched or an artist or designer who worships at the altar of Photoshop, there’s no denying the power and influence of the software. Yesterday marked the 25^th birthday of what is arguably Adobe’s biggest success story, so here at Parrotprint headquarters we thought we’d take a little look at the software, its influence and how far the product that plays an important role in achieving print canvas perfection for many of our customers, has come.

Adobe Photoshop backstory

Because we’re all spring chickens in the office, relatively speaking, it wasn’t until we started doing a little reading around that we found out that Photoshop hasn’t always been called Photoshop. In fact, its first incarnation – Display – didn’t mention photos at all. It’s next moniker, ImagePro, was already taken by another piece of software. It was only in late 1988 that the brothers behind the program settled on the name we’re all familiar with. Thomas and John Knoll successfully took this editing software to Adobe who released the first version in February 1990. There have been lots of versions and achievements since, many of which are plotted on Adobe’s own Photoshop timeline, which you can view here.

Photoshop’s gifts to the world

While this  video of American talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel jokes how a world without Photoshop would be one where individuals would need to risk life and limb to physically ride a lion rather than simply inserting themselves in position using the software, there are always a good number of examples of times where Photoshopping hasn’t gone quite according to plan circulating the internet. It doesn’t take much searching to find a lol-worthy selection of ‘Photoshop fails’ and alongside the ability to give images a professional finish at home, these errors are something else we must surely also be thankful to Adobe for.  Just for fun, here’s Buzzfeed’s roundup of the best Photoshop fails of 2014.

5 everyday Photoshop fixes

• It might sometimes seem appropriate that your two-year-old is displaying demonic red eyes in your latest family photo, but with the help of the red-eye removal tool they can look angelic in seconds.
• Photo opportunities don’t always come with ideal lighting, so we find the brightness/contrast function in Photoshop is one of the most-used tools when it comes to letting light into dark images.
• When a photograph is in black and white it can have a whole different feel and Photoshop has a range of different ways you can monochrome your images – perfect for creating classic canvas prints.
• Long before Instagram filters you could add a tint to photographs by adjusting saturation levels and create your own finishes.
• It’s not strictly a fix but playing with your colour contrast will make your images more dramatic and help you create your own pop art prints ready to transfer to canvas.

If you’re just getting started with Photoshop, you’ll find the video tutorials a godsend – they take you slowly through all the simple steps and you’ll soon find yourself with images you’ll want to transfer to canvas. Do you Photoshop your images to create perfect canvas prints?