Feb 19, 1990 — The First Release of Adobe Photoshop
February 19, 1990
On February 19, 1990, the very first version of Adobe Photoshop 1.0 was officially released.
It ran only on the Macintosh. It worked with small images. It came on floppy disks.
Before Photoshop
In the late 1980s, digital images were rare. Scanners were expensive. Digital cameras were almost nonexistent. Most image editing was done on specialized, costly systems used by labs and publishers.
Personal computers were not considered serious tools for image processing.
That is what made Photoshop different.
The Two Brothers
Photoshop began as a small experiment.
In 1987, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, wrote a simple program to display grayscale images on a Macintosh. He called it Display.
His brother, worked at Industrial Light & Magic. He immediately saw the potential. Together, they expanded the program into something much more powerful.
The software was first renamed ImagePro, and later — Photoshop.
The Adobe Deal
In 1988, the brothers showed the program to Adobe.
Adobe was already known for PostScript and digital publishing tools. The company decided to license the software and develop it further.
After refinement and testing, Photoshop 1.0 was released on February 19, 1990.
What Version 1.0 Could Do
Photoshop 1.0 looks simple today. No layers. No smart objects. No advanced filters.
But it already had:
Cropping
Basic color correction
Selection tools
Clone tool
Basic filters
For designers and photographers, this was revolutionary. For the first time, high‑quality image editing became accessible on a personal computer.
Why This Date Matters
February 19, 1990 marks the beginning of consumer digital image editing.
Over the next decades, Photoshop would become:
The industry standard for photo editing
A verb (“to photoshop”)
A cultural symbol of digital manipulation
It influenced advertising, cinema, journalism, web design, and social media.
The modern visual internet would not exist in the same way without it.