“I framed and hung Photoshop 2.5 – It’s only four floppies”

We all, by now, know that Adobe Photoshop turned 30 last week. Here on DIY Photography, we shared a close look at version 1.0, but other people are taking their own steps to memorialize Photoshop.

Richard Johnson of Spectacle Photo has done something extra-special. He’s taken a regular, photographic convention and applied it to Photoshop. The Floridian photographer mounted, framed and hung his Photoshop floppy disks in his office.

We spotted his brilliant idea here, in a post on Facebook, and it’s drawn some attention. Over 100 people have left comments about their memories of Photoshop. Many people have chimed in with the version they started with, while a few others specifically recall loading version 1.0. One person even pointed out, in jest, that Richard failed to cover his password, clearly visible on disk 4.

(so, yea, if you ever need to crack photoshop 2.5…)

At 1.44MB per floppy disk, this collection of four disks contains 5.76MB at most. It’s nothing by today’s standards. A single photo taken on an iPhone 11 takes up 2MB, and that’s not a Live Photo. By those standards, a single photo isn’t going to fit on a floppy disk, but 30 years ago, the entire Photoshop 2.5 program fit on four of them. Now, that isn’t fair comparison when we’ve applied Moore’s Law, but it’s a fair point nonetheless. Despite that, one user jested that these disks came out right after the dinosaurs died out!

Richard shared the process of ceremoniously hanging his disks, and we thank him for it! Take a look at this: –

Richard tells DIYP:

With the recent 30 year anniversary of Adobe Photoshop, I decided to track down the original floppy disks of the first photoshop I used back in 1992. I was 10 years old the first time I saw this program on a new MAC my school had just set up in the computer lab. Even with its limited capabilities, it was a far cry from the pixelated repetition of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego”.

I had no idea that this one program would be at the center of my career and be responsible for my livelihood as an adult. My studio is full of items from my craft and things that inspire me. There is no shortage of old vintage cameras, novel photography gear, and design-related artifacts.

When I saw that Photoshop was turning 30 it dawned on me that I had nothing in my studio that paid homage to the one thing that is so largely responsible for it all. So I tracked down these floppies, had them framed up, relocated a few legos, and put them on display front and center in my studio. I am sure it will start some great conversations with clients and creatives alike.

From Richard, and from all of us here once again – Happy Birthday, Photoshop!