Farhad Manjoo
STATE OF THE ART
The history of digital technology is full of innovations that are praised for having changed the world: the Mac, Microsoft Windows, the Netscape Navigator browser, the iPod and countless others. Then there are the many products that changed the world and were suddenly overtaken by some newer, purportedly better thing: the Mac, Microsoft Windows, Netscape Navigator, the iPod and countless others.
What’s rarer in tech is the product that causes major changes, hits turbulence and then, after some nimble adjustment, finds a surprising new audience.
This week is the 25th birthday of one such aging chameleon, Adobe Photoshop, an image-editing program that was created when we snapped pictures on film and displayed them on paper. It 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.
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The people who could get the most out of Photoshop, then, were designers working for newspapers, magazines and other industries that used presses.
“But we were always watching the trends to see exactly what features were required as the market evolved,” Thomas Knoll said. Each time some new opportunity came along — from the web to inkjet printers to digital cameras — Adobe quickly tuned Photoshop to the new technology. Each time, Photoshop grew.
In a way, then, Adobe’s turn to cloud-based subscriptions and mobile apps is similar: The business of software has changed, and Adobe is again shifting with it. Adobe now offers some of Photoshop’s best features to outside developers, who can add advanced image-editing capabilities to their apps at no cost. Adobe is also building a suite of apps that offer specific cuts of Photoshop and other programs to a wider range of users.
“When I see all this happening, I’m down with what they’re doing,” said Mr. Maeda, who is now a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “I think the younger generation of designers is looking for new tools, and they don’t care what device it’s on.”
