NYT: “Photoshop at 25: A Thriving Chameleon Adapts to an Instagram World”

Farhad Manjoo writes about how PS “has not just survived but thrived through every major technological transition in its lifetime: the rise of the web, the decline of print publishing, the rise and fall of home printing and the supernova of digital photography.”

The current talk of atomizing & democratizing Photoshop technology reminds me of “Photoshop & Punk Rock,” a Computer Arts guest piece I wrote 6 years ago. As they put it, “Adobe’s John Nack would like to blast Photoshop into a million pieces. He tells us why.”

Let’s measure the development team in the thousands, not in the dozens. Instead of relying on just the comparatively small crew at Adobe, let’s tap into the ‘Photoshop Nation’. And, rather than delivering improvements only every 18 to 24 months, let’s allow everyone to deliver them continuously, on the fly and on demand.

If the arc of my career bends towards one thing, it’s towards removing barriers between people & creative expression, on as large a scale as possible. It’s what I continue to do today.

Power to the people,
J. 

2 thoughts on “NYT: “Photoshop at 25: A Thriving Chameleon Adapts to an Instagram World”

  1. I still think Photoshop tries to do too much. It should focus on pixels. Illustrator can focus on vectors and Premiere on video, another tool for type, After Effects for effects, Flash for animation, etc.

    Make the tools modules of a larger platform, unify the UI and let people buy the modules they need.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *