The last time I visited Industrial Light & Magic, Russell Brown & I grabbed lunch with Photoshop co-creator John Knoll. As they’d just retired a bunch of bulky rendering hardware, John was busily removing the fascia (adorned with Imperial logos) and adding decorative blinkenlights, creating some pretty exceptional décor for his office.
I was reminded of this seeing Russell share this 1-minute history of how John’s work at ILM proved to be crucial in his & Thomas’s creation of Photoshop:
Here’s the full episode
00:00 Cold Open — AI, Creativity & The Big Question
00:50 Welcome to Creative Outsiders
01:09 Introducing Russell Brown (“Doc”)
02:00 Photoshop Origins: ILM, Star Wars & The Abyss
06:55 The “Holy Sh*t Moment” — Taking Control of Images
11:10 From Rub-Down Type to Digital Creativity
12:05 Where Creativity Comes From
16:00 Becoming the Best at What You Love
18:15 Enter AI — Tool or Threat?
24:00 The Future of Photography & AI Workflows
30:15 Creating Films with AI & Storyboarding
34:00 The Ethics of AI in Photography
37:00 AI for Pre-Visualization (Not Replacement)
43:00 From Photoshop Fear to AI Fear
44:30 Why Russell Shoots on iPhone
48:00 Simplicity, Constraints & Creativity
And just in case you’re curious, here’s John recreating the first demo of Photoshop, some 20 years after the fact (which is itself now 16 years ago, OMG…):