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Found Footage: Photoshop v1.0 recreated on iPhone

by Chris Rawson Feb 23rd 2010 at 8:00AM



To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Photoshop, Adobe recently recreated Photoshop 1.0 -- on the iPhone. Porting the venerable application over to the iPhone reportedly took Adobe a mere two weeks of development. The application is not available on the iTunes Store; Adobe only created the app as a promo for their 20th anniversary Photoshop celebration. The app is really only valuable as a bit of nostalgia anyway, as Adobe's free iPhone app, Photoshop.com Mobile, has far more features than the Photoshop 1.0 app demoed above, which only seems to perform global level and RGB channel adjustments.

Even though the app isn't available to the public and is of limited utility compared to more modern offerings, it was still pretty cool to see UI elements from Classic Mac OS running on the iPhone. Using the Mac startup chime when Photoshop 1.0 launches on the iPhone was a particularly inspired touch, even if they did use the modern chime rather than any of the three 1990-era chimes. Now, if someone ever ports HyperCard over to the iPhone, I think my geek-meter might go right into overload.

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To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Photoshop, Adobe recently recreated Photoshop 1.0 -- on the iPhone. Porting the venerable...
 

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CAVEperson

HyperCard on the iPhone... Sooo ironic that Apple won't allow this (no scripting apps, remember?)

Sure would be fun for casual tinkering, though.

February 25 2010 at 6:23 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
phildavis

Pine for HyperCard no more! Check out Runtime Revolution (http://www.runrev.com/), especially their upcoming mobile app development tools. Rev is the inheritor of the HyperCard legacy, but goes so far beyond HC it's ridiculous.

February 23 2010 at 4:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sodapop

LOL - all you peeps bemoaning this: ITS NOT A CONSUMER PRODUCT. Sheesh. They did it for fun. Do you know what fun is?


*
I am totally with you on Hypercard.

February 23 2010 at 3:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Evan Kirchhoff

Ian's right -- Adobe didn't do this, we did it to show off our Corona SDK (http://www.anscamobile.com). And yes, it's a promo item for the 20th anniversary, it's not meant to be ALL of Photoshop 1.0.

Obviously, Adobe's official Photoshop.com app has more features and filters. In our defense, they spent the better part of a year on that, and we only had a few days. :) Also, even though ours is more of a novelty item, it does implement traditional "pro" features like adjusting gamma and various intensity levels in separate RGB channels, so it's actually more useful than we expected. The interface cheats by using large invisible touch areas around the tiny sliders and buttons, so it works reasonably well.

Regarding the startup chime: I thought we might have used the wrong sound there, but what DID the startup chime sound like in 1990? The Mini vMac emulator makes the Mac Plus "bing" sound, but nobody seems to remember that anymore, and in theory we should be replicating whatever the color Mac did. I had Amigas back then, so I don't remember firsthand!

February 23 2010 at 2:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Evan Kirchhoff's comment
unclebagel

I was going to drag my Mac SE out of the garage, but this is easier:
http://www.geekology.co.za/blog/2009/07/macintosh-startup-chimes-over-the-years/

Wow... those sound so.... OLD!! I guess nostalgia has a way of sugar coating things.

February 23 2010 at 3:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jerod

That was a rather annoying video to watch.

February 23 2010 at 11:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
alansky

I love my iPhone, and I've been using Photoshop since version 1; but I still think it's ridiculous to imagine that there could be any value whatsoever in porting a "real" Photoshop app to a device with a 3.5-inch screen.The fact that something is theoretically possible does NOT automatically make it a good idea.

February 23 2010 at 10:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to alansky's comment
Jerod

It would be great if they could port a light photoshop to the iPad. I plan on using the brushes app heavily as a sketchbook of sorts.

February 23 2010 at 11:25 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ian

This article is badly researched. Adobe didn't make this app. Ansca Mobile made it using their Corona technology (in 3-ish days!) Full write up here:

http://blog.anscamobile.com/2010/02/eating-our-own-dogfood-how-we-built-the-photoshop-20th-anniversary-app-in-three-days/

February 23 2010 at 10:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Justin

Mini vMac runs System 7, and there's an iPhone port available on Cydia. I believe it lacks keyboard input support, but the mouse works fine.

February 23 2010 at 9:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin Long

This app wasn't created by Adobe. It was created by Ansca Mobile to show offf their new SDK called Corona. Here is a link to their site:

http://blog.anscamobile.com/2010/02/now-it-can-be-told-photoshop-and-corona/

February 23 2010 at 9:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
link.dupont

Gah, why does that video make me cringe? Doesn't the voiceover guy sound kinda like Eddie Deezen (think Mandark from Dexter's Labratory).

February 23 2010 at 9:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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