Are males affected by Photoshop?
An exploration of the possible impact of image manipulation on male focused media industries and audiences.
Every day we are bombarded with images of “flawless” celebrities on television, in magazines advertisements and on social media. Our perception of what a “normal” body looks like has been skewed. The ways which a person’s appearance can be changed through photoshop are endless from lengthening neck and legs to cutting out ribcages, raising cheekbones, filling in hair and changing skin colours. Studies have shown that women and men now are far more likely to suffer from eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia.
The detrimental effects these images have on young women have long been reported. In fact the body type portrayed in advertising is possessed naturally by only 5% of women. The statistic proves how women are trying to achieve something that is virtually unattainable and undoubtedly unhealthy if it is attained. Studies have shown that by the time a woman is 17, she has already viewed at least 250 thousand commercial messages through media that portray women as unrealistically thin. Experts also claim that models weigh 23% less than the average woman.
The history of Photoshop.
The concept of using photo manipulation and graphic designing began in the early 1900s. Graphic manipulation was being used as a medium of storytelling and narration. It was inconvenient and expensive, requiring such things as a dark room and a range of tools such as reels of negatives and fixer liquids. In the 1950’s the practice of digital photography began to be used with fully functioning computers of that era. Instead of going through the old procedure of photo development through the use of negatives, images were now developed quite easily through the digital media.
Nowadays, Photoshop is one of the most widely used photo-editing softwares in the world. It is certainly the most popular software among my peers in my photographic studies and we can't imagine a world without this application.Obviously, due to our age, we are of a generation who are unfamiliar with the crudity of previous photographic editing technologies. So I believe my research on this project must start at the very beginning and plot its journey up to the present day.
It is important to remember that Photoshop has only been around for 31 years, when it was initially created in 1987 it was a clumsy application and it has taken 31 years of constant improvements to get to the current format. I will be exploring how Photoshop came to be what it is today. I will look at how the application excelled and improved with each new release in a detailed timeline of the software's release history. I will also be looking at who created the software, and why they created it.
As mentioned Photoshop was born in 1987 at the University of Michigan, where Thomas Knoll was a PHD engineering student. He developed his interest in Photography with his father’s influence, who was also interested in photography but mainly computers. His father brought an Apple II Plus computer home from work, which in those days was cutting-edge technology for computers. Thomas wrote a small subroutine for a program that allowed him to translate monochromatic images to greyscale on his monitor. After working on the program a little more, Thomas was able to create a number of processes that applied various effects to images on the screen, which at the time was a technological break through. Thomas had a brother called John who was studying special effects at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic. When Thomas showed his brother his creation they began to work together on converting his program into an image editor.
The two worked together to bring the bits of code and tools together into a unified program, which was originally called "Display." Display became "ImagePro" for a short time, before the Photoshop name came about in March of 1988 and became the very first image processing software for photography. The earliest versions were basic because the only tools available were basic filters and image adjusters. However, they were still much improved when compared to the kind of traditional photo development that took place in the dark rooms during the first half of the 20th century.
March 1988- Photoshop version 0.87 was licensed to a company called Barney-scan based in Silicon Valley. Pixel-based image editing software was just coming to the market.
Some of the features in the earliest version of Photoshop were:
-Displaying and saving several file formats
-Soft edge selections
-Levels for tone adjustments
-Colour Balance, Hue, and Saturation colour adjustments
-Painting capabilities
September 1988- Photoshop was demonstrated to Adobe and by April 1989, the Knoll brothers had worked out a licensing agreement for Adobe to begin distributing Photoshop. Photoshop was in development for 10 months before Photoshop 1.0 was released, exclusively for Macintosh, in February, 1990.
Photoshop 1.0 for Mac included:
-Color correction.
-Image Output optimisation
-Curves
-Levels
-Clone tool
June 1991- Photoshop 2.0 for Mac was launch in June of 1991, and by then Apple had brought colour to the Macintosh interface with System 7.
Key features in Photoshop 2.0:
-Paths
-Rasterizer for Adobe
-Illustrator files
-CMKY color support
-Duotones
-Pen tool
April 1992- Microsoft began shipping Windows 3.0, and sold one million copies in its first two months on the market. Photoshop was still a Mac-only program at this time.
Photoshop 3.0 added these features:
-Palettes
-Support for 16-bit files
In 1995 Adobe purchased Photoshop from its creators Thomas and John Knoll. In 1996, with the advent of digital cameras Adobe released PhotoDeluxe 1.0, enabling consumers to work with scanned and digital photos.
November 1996- Photoshop 4.0 was released simultaneously for Mac and Windows.
Photoshop 4.0 introduced:
-Adjustment layers and actions, allowing users to perform non-destructive image adjustments and automate many tasks.
May 1998- Adobe shipped Photoshop 5.0.
Adobe also shipped PhotoDeluxe Business Edition in May to help business users customise digital photos and use them in business documents.
Photoshop 5.0 brought the following new features:
-International Colour consortium (ICC)-Based colour workflow
-Multiple undo and redo and the history palette
-Magnetic Lasso tool
-Editable type and type layers
-Layer Effects
-Measure tool
-Layer alignment tools
July 1999- Photoshop 5.5 was bundled with ImageReady, and also featured:
-Save for Web dialog for optimising and compressing web images
-Extract tool for cutting objects out of their surroundings
-Image Slicing and rollover effects for web graphics
-Web Photo Gallery automation
-Contact Sheet and Picture Package automation
-Magic Eraser, Background Eraser, and Art History Brush
October 2000.- Photoshop 6.0 new features:
-Updated User Interface and Options Bar
-Direct text entry and Text warp
-Vector shapes
-Liquify filter for image distortions
-Layer styles/blending options dialog
-Content Layers
April 2002.- Photoshop 7.0 key features:
Healing brush
Vector Text
New painting engine
Photoshop file browser
October 2003-
Photoshop CS (8.0) key features:
Shadow/Highlight adjustment
Match Color command
Lens Blur filter
Real-time histogram
Improved Slice tool
Hierarchical layer groups
PhotoMerge
Custom keyboard shortcuts
The Filter Gallery
Text on a path
Product activation (copy protection)
April 2005-
Photoshop CS2 (9.0) key features:
Adobe Bridge 1.0 file browser integrated across all Creative Suite applications
Smart Objects
Image warp transformations
Spot healing brush
Red-eye tool
Lens correction filter
Noise reduction filter
Smart Sharpen
Vanishing point
Smart Guides
Warp transformations
Font previews
HDR (high dynamic range) imaging support
Modified Layer selection
March 2007-
Features in Photoshop CS3 (10.0):
Native support for Intel-based Macintosh
User-interface improvements
Smart Filters
Quick Selection tool
Refine Edge tool
Automatic layer alignment and blending
Black and White adjustment
Improved print window
Features in Photoshop CS3 (10.0) Extended:
3D visualization and texture editing
MATLAB integration
Measurement and counting tools
DICOM format support
Motion Graphics and video LAYERS
Movie paint
Vanishing point with 3D support
Image stack processing
october 2008-
Features in Photoshop CS4 (11.0):
Tabbed interface
Adjustments panel
Masks panel
OpenGL graphics card acceleration enabling smoother panning and zooming, and fluid canvas rotation
Content aware scaling
64-bit Windows version
Features in Photoshop CS4 (11.0) Extended:
Direct editing of 3D objects
Improved motion graphics
Volume rendering
Easier data collection and analysis
Photoshop CS5 was launched on 12 April 2010.
CS5 introduces new tools such as the
Content-Aware Fill, Refine Edge, Mixer Brush, Bristle Tips and Puppet Warp, Automatic image straightening, the Rule-of-Thirds cropping tool, colour pickup, and saving a 16-bit image as a JPEG. CS5 Extended includes everything in CS5 plus features in 3D and video editing.
Photoshop CS6, released in May 2012, new features > Content-Aware tool, video editing, Colour and exposure adjustments, layers, "straighten" tool,
background saving, customisable auto-save feature.
Photoshop CC (14.0) June 2013.
Major features in this version include All-new Smart Sharpen, Intelligent Upsampling, and Camera Shake Reduction for reducing blur caused by camera shake. Editable Rounded Rectangles …with two plug-ins, one to automatically generate image assets based on an extension in the layer Major features include Perspective Warp, Linked Smart Objects, and 3D Printing support.[
Photoshop CC (15.0) June 2014. features improvements to content-aware tools, two new blur tools (spin blur and path blur) and a new focus mask feature
Photoshop CC June 2015. Adobe added various creative features including Adobe Stock, which is a library of custom stock images.
Photoshop CC November 2016. It introduced a new template selector when creating new documents, the ability to search for tools, panels and help articles for Photoshop, support for SVG OpenType fonts , support for the MacBook Pro Touch Bar.
Photoshop CC October 2017. It featured an overhaul to the brush organisation system, brush stroke smoothing, and over 1000 brushes , A Curvature Pen tool, Lightroom Photo access, Variable font support, copy-paste layers, enhanced tooltips, 360 panorama and HEIF support, PNG compression, algorithm improvements to Face-aware and selection tools, improved image resizing, and performance improvements to file opening, filters, and brush strokes.