This was how you installed Photoshop 23 years ago
Jul 28, 2017
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Photoshop version 3.0 was the version that introduced me to Photoshop. It came out at the end of 1994, and I discovered it the following year while in college. I had no idea what I wanted to do with it at the time, but it was still amazing. I’d never seen anything like it, and I wanted to learn all about what it was and what it could do.
I saw an image scroll up my Facebook feed today that Adobe posted way back in 2013. It was the picture below, with the note that the version of Photoshop CC available at the time would require 733 floppy discs. Today it would probably be closer to 2,000. But how does Photoshop 3.0 stack up against its future selves?
When I got Photoshop 3.0, it was a heavily discounted educational license through college. It came on a stack of several floppy discs and once installed on my PC, it was glorious. It flew on my beasty 486 DX2/66 with its 8MB RAM.
Today, the system requirements for 64Bit Photoshop CC 2017 state the need for 3.1GB of space. That means it would require anywhere up to around 2200 3.5″ floppy discs. On CD-ROMs, you’d only need half a dozen, or it could all still fit nicely on a DVD.
It’s incredible just how far along the software has come in that time. Photoshop 3.0 (1994) was probably the first massively impactful version of Photoshop, as it introduced layers. A fundamental tool for digital artists everywhere. Many traditional artists and animators had been used to this for decades in the form of acetate sheets.
- Photoshop 4 (1996) brought adjustment layers, “Actions” (macros), grids and guides, the free transform tool, and multicolour gradients. Distributed on CD-ROM, baby!
- Photoshop 5 (1998) added multiple levels of undo (THANK YOU!), better colour management now that digital photography was starting to become a thing.
- Photoshop 5.5 (1999) introduced the “Save for Web” dialogue, when most of us who even had Internet were still on dialup and needed to save as much bandwidth as possible.
- Photoshop 6.0 (2000) gave us that tool you love-to-hate, Liquify.
Photoshop 6.0 was the version I was still using in 2002 when I picked up my first pair of Nikon D100 bodies. It had no native support for Nikon’s NEF raw files at all. Everything had to be brought in by a proprietary Nikon plugin. It was painful, but it worked.
- Photoshop 7.0 (2002) gave us the healing brush, text became fully vectorised, and the 7.0.1 update gave us the optional plugin “Camera RAW 1.x”
- Photoshop CS (2003) made Camera RAW 2.x a mandatory part of the installation. We got the Shadow/Highlight dialogue, match colour, lens blur filter, a real-time histogram, 16Bit per channel layers, and support for files larger than 2GB.
Photoshop CS also introduced some basic copy protection. It detected and refused to print scanned images of various bank notes from around the world.
- Photoshop CS2 (2005) brought a fantastic feature for me. Smart Objects. Besides layers, these are probably my favourite feature of Photoshop. We got the lens correction filter, smart sharpen, spot healing brush and 32Bit HDRI support (a big deal for me at the time as I was doing a lot of 3D work).
- Photoshop CS3 (2007) had a revised user interface, a drastically updated Camera RAW, quick select tool, auto aligning and blending. Smart Objects gained Smart Filters. There were many alterations to adjustment layers, too, including Curves, Channel Mixer and Brightness and Contrast.
- Photoshop CS4 (2008) came with many UI and performance improvements. Native support for 64Bit on Windows, OpenGL display acceleration, smoother panning and zooming with fluid canvas rotation. This was where we also begun to see “Content-aware” features, with the Content Aware Scale.
- Photoshop CS5 (2010) – Content Aware Fill (although many of us called it Content Aware Fail at the time). The release of feature was almost as controversial as the liquify tool, although it turned out to be nowhere near as good as many of us had been led to believe. A 64Bit version of Photoshop was now available for the Mac. We got automatic lens correction, and “grain” control in Camera RAW.
The CS5.1 update that came out the following year introduced the subscription model pricing. This was the beginning of the end for many existing users. But also the start of something wonderful for those that would never have become Photoshop users in the first place.
- Photoshop CS6 (2012) came with Camera RAW 7.0, and today the final release that is compatible with CS6 is Camera Raw 9.1.1. It had another big user interface overhaul. Automatic and background saves of your files were now a thing. Content Aware Patch and Move tools were added. Colour Range offered skin tone and facial detection. There was a greater support for video, along with 3DLUT adjustments. The 3D user interface was also completely redesigned to be easier to use.
Photoshop CS6 was the final version of Photoshop for which you could buy a perpetual license outright. It was also the final version to be sold on physical media.
Photoshop CC – 2013+
Since switching over to the cloud subscription model, Photoshop has seen many significant feature additions. Camera Shake Reduction, Intelligent Upsampling, Camera RAW as a filter to name just three that came with the first release. Then Smart Objects got a significant upgrade with Linked Smart Objects. Now you could reference external files. Fantastic for collaborations. 3D printing support was added, and the Mercury Graphics Engine support was expanded. stacking layer styles and so much more.
If Adobe had stuck with its original naming convention, we’d be on version 18.1.1 right now.
Things sure have come a very long way. It’s hard to remember now just how incredibly advanced Photoshop 3.0 seemed at the time.
What’s been your favourite feature or addition to Photoshop over the years?
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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32 responses to “This was how you installed Photoshop 23 years ago”
I think version 3 or 3.04 was the first version to come on a CD.
CS versions and now CC
Brilliant
My favorite addition must be the ability to work in layers….
Layers are absolutely single most important feature, ever.
I’m sure you’ll have a good viewpoint Richard?
haha I used it when there was no such thing as layers and blending pictures was a permanent thing :/ it was frustrating at times, but ran a hell of a lot faster then today even with old hardware.
The ability to quit using it and get something else
LOL, I’m sure I still have those in a box somewhere.
I had the version before this! #olderthandirt
Insert disk 27 into drive A and press enter to continue
And then the dreaded CRC error!
Layers and more recently content aware
I still have my disks somewhere. Favorite is cloning.
I had an Adobe program that was the precursor to PS after looking over some old floppy discs. What a change.
So much memories :-)
I started with v4.0 ?
More important than layers was the hability to navigate through the history. In the old versions you had only ONE step in the history. Try to work with only one “undo” action, only one! ? And when you click your mouse anywhere, you have already lost that “undo” step. Try it! ?
I once installed Office off of floppies. It took 25 of them.
I agree with layers, but back when text became editable after it was applied, was amazing for teaching my grammar-challenged high school students!
Not a fan of CC! There’s gotta be a better way.
Lightroom. :-)
Layers, masks, content aware fill and dehaze
Yep, CA fill & dehaze are the bomb. :-)
Layers, then the ability to have more than 100 layers, then being able to group and nest groups of layers
Nah, most of us installed it from bootlegged copies someone bootlegged from someone else.
GIMP
Modify selection tool for extracting things out of their background
It was awesome no monthly payments ?
Starten in v2.x o layers, few tools, one undo, text stuck after typing… AND i worked on a Mac Classic II with a 9″ monitor… today with latest CC and dual 32″ and both kensington trackball and wacom bamboo it’s another story totally…
I worked at a university and I had a big set of Adobe floppy disks in my desk for years!
I hate to admit it, but yes I have been working with Photoshop since V.1. Yes, version one. Illustrator V.1 Then, later also Dreamweaver V.1. Back then you had to save color files or print files as four separate files > C > M > Y > K. So ‘filename.c’ ‘filename.m’ etc on a SYQUEST disk and take it to a Service Beareau to get FILM OUTPUT to make Plates for PRINTING (a 4 color ad in a magazine.) Photoshop V.3 was a marvel. I wish I had a copy of it, I’d love to work in it again. It just worked. Still to this day you only just need to focus on the main tools and being an expert with them. Photoshop V.6 was great. A few CS versions. I certainly miss sole physical ownership of the software on the computer. Later on as Web Design developed in early history – back then you had two choices [Macromedia Dreamweaver or NetObjects Fusion.] No, I am not making that up. Both were version 1. All of this was of course done on the Mac back then. It was just the choice for Graphics at the time, trust me. Later people started using PC’s. The magazines at the time were reviewing, “Which one is Best? Which one do you Pick? Choose a Path.” Dreamweaver was proclaimed a “Harder Learning Curve but More Advanced.” NetObjects was kinda cool at the time. :-) We would get in arguments as to which one to use and which one to spend time learning. (No I am not making this up.) I chose Dreamweaver and got lucky I guess. Photoshop and the Internet has come a long way since then. But the methods and practices of how things were done were invaluable. People learned the art of being a Graphic Designer. A Art Director, a Photographer. The Zen, the Practice, the Technique, and the Work Ethics were remarkable. If anyone has a copy of Photoshop v.3 let me know.