Adobe Photoshop 1.0 Source Code (1990)

For texting I recommend using a mobile phone or desktop instant messaging program. While it's not the case with all of them, graphics editing tools tend to have texting utilities as a second-class citizen at best

dist-epoch• 7 months ago

FTFY: the funny thing with GIMP is: even while its a very powerful tool, it still lacks a good image editing tool until today

pjmlp5• 7 months ago

And geometric shapes drawing, it is probably the only software that requires using paths for basic stuff.

rplnt• 7 months ago

I used to use GIMP as an example of OSS desktop applications having bad UX, I mean back around 2010 maybe. The UX felt plain horrible. Anything I every tried there was pain to achieve. And there was plethora of desktop applications having the same issue back then. "Geeks can't do UI".

I feel like that has changed? Even Blender felt good the last time I used it, Firefox became kinda fine, though these are probably bad examples as they are both mainstream software. But what about OSS that is used primarily by OSS enthusiasts? What about GIMP now?

VoidWhisperer• 7 months ago

This is just my personal experience, but even with the current UI, there can tend to be a learning curve with GIMP. Alot of it probably comes from figuring out where tools and functionality that are readily available upfront in other paint programs are hidden 2-3 menus deep in GIMP

cynicalsecurity• 7 months ago

A simple trick to make GIMP perfectly usable (exists since ages):

To change GIMP to single-window mode (merging panels into one window), go to "Windows" in the top menu and select or check "Single-Window Mode"; this merges all elements like the Toolbox, Layers, and History into one unified view.

tonyedgecombe• 7 months ago

Blender feels like an outlier amongst open source software. Outside of programmers tools the great majority of open source feels mediocre. I wonder what the Blender people did differently.

maxloh2• 7 months ago

That’s what happens when you let people do other people's jobs. UI/UX design is a profession, and there is a reason for that.

Unfortunately, designers are rare among the FOSS community. You can't attract real casual or professional users if you don't recognize the value of professional UI/UX.

voidUpdate• 7 months ago

I've never understood the negative comments around UX for GIMP. It always feels just fine for me. Some stuff is in menus, but its a complex application with a lot of parts so I understand that

trinix912• 7 months ago

GIMP in my opinion has a very good UI when you're looking at graphics as a programmer: threshold this, clamp that, apply a kernel ("custom filter")... Everything seems to click with a mental model of someone who does graphics programming.

Whereas Photoshop and other "mainstream" software use terms and procedures non-programmers are more likely to be familiar with: heal this area with a patch, clone something with a clone stamp, scissors/lasso to cut something out (not saying GIMP doesn't have those)...

GaryBluto• 7 months ago

GIMP is an excellent example of the shortcomings of FOSS, considering that it first released in 1998 and almost 27 years later still does not have feature parity with Photoshop 6.0.

maxloh2• 7 months ago

Those are not the shortcomings of FOSS. Rather, they are shortcomings of a lack of funding. The FOSS builds of VS Code, Chromium, and Android are good examples of high quality FOSS, all of which have Big Tech companies pouring money into them every year.

Daneel_• 7 months ago

Interesting little read. I always find it fascinating when old code holds up really well - especially structurally. Great trip down memory lane!

ofalkaed2• 7 months ago

When this got released I really expected someone in the opensource community to run with it, but as far as I know no one has. Back around 1990 a Graphic designer that had his office n the same building as my mom worked in let me copy his Photoshop 1.x disks and nothing has ever compared to it for me. When will we get the linux port of Photoshop 1.0? I would love to see how it develops.

delaminator2• 7 months ago

If they did, they can only send you screenshots

2. Restrictions. Except as expressly specified in this Agreement, you may not: (a) transfer, sublicense, lease, lend, rent or otherwise distribute the Software or Derivative Works to any third party; or (b) make the functionality of the Software or Derivative Works available to multiple users through any means, including, but not limited to, by uploading the Software to a network or file-sharing service or through any hosting, application services provider, service bureau, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or any other type of services. You acknowledge and agree that portions of the Software, including, but not limited to, the source code and the specific design and structure of individual modules or programs, constitute or contain trade secrets of Museum and its licensors.

ofalkaed2• 7 months ago

I was talking about more than just a literal port, running with it is broader than just a literal port. I guess my general point is that I am disappointed that all these releases of historical code have so little to show for being released.

Edit: Disappointed is really not the right word but I am failing at finding the right word.

somat• 7 months ago

It would be trivial to distribute a patch and a link to the original source. The patch can be distributed under whatever license the author wants. The resulting binary then becomes an unlicensed derivative work, the person who compiled it can use it however they want but are not allowed to legally distribute it.

My personal thoughts are: open-source software is great, probably the ideal condition, but I wish the general software distribution environment was not effectively all or nothing. open-source or compiled binary. I wish that protected-source software was considered a more valid distribution model. where you can compile, inspect fix and run the software but are not allowed to distribute it. Because trying to diagnose a problem when all you have is a compilation artifact is a huge pain. You see some enterprise software like this but for the most part it either open-source or no-source.

I am a bit surprised that there is no third party patch to get photoshop 1.0 to run under modern linux or windows, not for any real utility(at this point MS paint probably has better functionality), but for the fun of it. "This is what it feels like to drive photoshop 1"

msk-lywenn• 7 months ago

The source is now readable but it’s not open source at all.

bromuro• 7 months ago

It is open source but not free software.

ofrzeta3• 7 months ago

You could try having an LLM port it to Linux :) As an aside I was always (well, no longer) hoping that Photoshop gets ported to Linux because at least an IRIX port existed, so there has to be some source code with X11 or whatever library code.

https://fsck.technology/software/Silicon%20Graphics/Software...

robert-brown• 7 months ago

Photoshop was ported to IRIX using Latitude, Quorum Software's implementation of Mac OS System 7. Apple later acquired the Quorum's code and it became part of Carbon.

jeffrallen4• 7 months ago

As an experiment, I gave the source zip file to Claude and told it to make a WASM version of the app, by translating the Pascal to Go.

It nailed it, first try.

I cannot, unfortunately, share a link to the website it created because of the license.

LLM translations of historical software to modern platforms is a solved problem. Try it, you'll see.

I used https://exe.dev/ and their Shelley agent to drive Claude. Give it a try, it is jaw dropping.

anthk2• 7 months ago

If it uses Motif and IrisGL (now MESA3D) the amount of porting effort it's near NIL.

And, for purity/completeness, avoid Maxx Desktop and/or NSCDE; EMWM with XMToolbar it's close enough to SGI's Irix desktop.

https://fastestcode.org/emwm.html

LollipopYakuza• 7 months ago

I understand it was a very unique and powerful piece of software in 1990 but why would it be such a game changer to have the 1.0 running on Linux today?

gwbas1c• 7 months ago

What about GIMP or any of the other open source image editors?

Just supporting a modern OS's graphical API (The pre-OSX APIs are long dead and unsupported) is a major effort.

reconnecting3• 7 months ago

There was something magical about white floppies, as shown in the screenshot.

apples_oranges• 7 months ago

you mean photo not screenshot.

I think all floppies are magical :)

reconnecting3• 7 months ago

Image.

Back in time, black were ordinary, and only white/grey ones were for licensed software, thus more desirable.

https://computerhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/photo...

spacebacon• 7 months ago

That software box on the shelf at Babbage’s is a cherished memory—a tangible oddity of software distribution prior to broadband, now just a relic in memory. Most of us assumed it would last forever. We get our software at the click of a button now, but we traded something for that.

xnorswap2• 7 months ago

Software felt more valuable when you forked over £60+ ( Which was worth a lot more back then ) and got a physical box, with a chunky set of instruction manuals and 5+ floppy disks.

It wasn't even broadband that destroyed that experience, when CDs came around developers realised they had space to just stick a PDF version of the manual on the CD itself and put in a slip that tells you to stick in the CD, run autorun.exe if it didn't already, and refer to the manual on the CD for the rest!

ofrzeta3• 7 months ago

Manuals like AutoCADs have certainly felt valuable https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Gm8AAeSwwIZowjzn/s-l1600.jpg It's not even complete, for instance the ADS manual is missing. It's also a bit more expensive with roughly 3700 USD in 1992.

flyinghamster• 7 months ago

Also, you were far more likely to get actual documentation back in the day. You're never going to get a detailed first-party technical reference for today's Apple computers (at least not without being Big Enough and signing a mountain of NDAs); compare that to the Apple II having a full listing of the Monitor ROM, or the original IBM PC Technical Reference Manual.

moregrist• 7 months ago

There are many things I feel nostalgic for in that era, but chunky manuals for specific software are at the bottom of that list.

They weren’t like textbooks, which have knowledge that tends to be relevant for decades. You’d get a new set with every software release, making the last 5-20 lbs of manuals obsolete.

You did lose some of the readability of an actual book. Hard-copy manuals were better for that. But for most software manuals, I did more “look up how to do this thing” than reading straight through. And with a pdf on a CD you had much better search capabilities. Before that you’d have to rely on the ToC, the book index and your own notes. For many manuals, the index wasn’t great. Full text search was a definite step up.

Even the good ones, like the 1980s IBM 2-ring binder manuals, which had good indexes, were a pain to deal with and couldn’t functionally match a PDF or text file on a CD for searchability.

Nifty3929• 7 months ago

I think another thing we lost was the sense of a software release being a complete, immutable product - and the development rigor required of that.

You might expect now and again to get some optional updates/patches later, but that was rare - and rarer still for most people to even know about them.

These days, software is never complete. Nothing is done. It's just a point-in-time state with a laundry list of bugs and TODOs that just roll out whenever. The software is just whatever git tag we're pointing to today.

I understand how/why it has become like this - but it still makes me sad.

russellbeattie• 7 months ago

"Software architect Grady Booch is the Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM Research Almaden and a trustee of the Computer History Museum. He offers the following observations about the Photoshop source code."

OMG. Booch?? The father of UML is still around? Given that UML is a true crime against humanity, it just goes to show there is no justice in the world. (I want a lifespan refund for the amount of time I spent learning UML and Design Patterns back in the bad old Enterprise Java days. Oof)

heap_perms• 7 months ago

I completed a CS degree just a year ago, and they absolutely wrecked us with UML. I’m still recovering mentally.

goalieca2• 7 months ago

UML used to be a staple of job interviews.

pjmlp5• 7 months ago

On the contrary, UML is quite useful in enterprise architecture, and I am yet to find an alternative that isn't much worse.

It is like the YAML junk that gets pushed nowadays in detriment of proper schemas, and validation tools we have in XML.

mkoubaa2• 7 months ago

Hard disagree. The code is the spec. The code is the spec. The code is the spec.

ofrzeta3• 7 months ago

Quite the praise by Grady Booch:

"There are only a few comments in the version 1.0 source code, most of which are associated with assembly language snippets. That said, the lack of comments is simply not an issue. This code is so literate, so easy to read, that comments might even have gotten in the way."

"This is the kind of code I aspire to write.”

crazygringo4• 7 months ago

the lack of comments is simply not an issue

I'm looking at the code and just cannot agree. If I look at a command like "TRotateFloatCommand.DoIt" in URotate.p, it's 200 lines long without a single comment. I look at a section like this and there's nothing literate about it. I have no idea what it's doing or why at a glance:

  pt.h := BSR (r.left + ORD4 (r.right), 1);
  pt.v := BSR (r.top + ORD4 (r.bottom), 1);
  
  pt.h := pt.h - BSR (width, 1);
  pt.v := pt.v - BSR (height, 1);
  
  pt.h := Max (0, Min (pt.h, fDoc.fCols - width));
  pt.v := Max (0, Min (pt.v, fDoc.fRows - height));
  
  IF width > fDoc.fCols THEN
    pt.h := pt.h - BSR (width - fDoc.fCols - 1, 1);
  
  IF height > fDoc.fRows THEN
    pt.v := pt.v - BSR (height - fDoc.fRows - 1, 1);

Just breaking up the function with comments delineating its four main sections and what they do would be a start. As would simple things like commenting e.g. what purpose 'pt' serves -- the code block above is where it is first defined, but you can't guess what its purpose is until later when it's used to define something else.

Good code does not make comments unnecessary or redundant or harmful. This is a myth that needs to die. Comments help you understand code much faster, understand the purpose of variables before they get used, understand the purpose of functions and parameters before reading the code that defines them, etc. They vastly aid in comprehension. And those are just "what" comments I'm talking about -- the additional necessity of "why" comments (why the code uses x approach instead of seemingly more obvious approach y or z, which were tried and failed) is a whole other subject.

tgtweak• 7 months ago

This actually looks surprisingly straightforward for what the function is doing - certainly if you have domain context of image editing or document placement. You'll find it in a lot of UI code - this one uses bit shifts for efficiency but what it's doing is pretty straightforward.

For clarity and to demonstrate, this is basically what this function is doing, but in css:

.container {

  position: relative;

}

.obj {

  position: absolute;

  left: 50%;

  top: 50%;

  transform: translate(-50%, -50%);


}

DoneWithAllThat• 7 months ago

Man I just don’t know who to believe, you or the Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM research Almaden.

yearolinuxdsktp• 7 months ago

It’s not a myth, it’s a sound software engineering principle.

Every comment is a line of code, and every line of code is a liability, and, worse, comments are a liability waiting to rot, to be missed in a refactor, and waiting to become a source of confusion. It’s an excuse to name things poorly, because “good comment.” The purpose of variables should be in their name, including units if it’s a measurement. Parameters and return values should only be documented when not obvious from the name or type—for example, if you’re returning something like a generic Pair, especially if left and right have the same type. We’d been living with decades of autocomplete, you don’t need to make variables be short to type.

The problem with AI-generated code is that the myth that good code is thoroughly commented code is so pervasive, that the default output mode for generated code is to comment every darn line it generates. After all, in software education, they don’t deduct points for needless comments, and students think their code is now better w/ the comments, because they almost never teach writing good code. Usually you get kudos for extensive comments. And then you throw away your work. Computer science field is littered with math-formula-influenced space-saving one or two letter identifiers, barely with any recognizable semantic meaning.

j16sdiz2• 7 months ago

BSR = bitwise right-shift

ORD4 = cast as 32bit integer.

BSR(x,1) simply meant x divided by 2. This is very comment coding idom back in those days when Compiler don't do any optimization and bitwise-shift is much faster than division.

The snippet in C would be:

    pt.h = (r.left + (int32_t)r.right) / 2;
    pt.v = (r.top + (int32_t)r.bottom) / 2;

    pt.h -= (width / 2);
    pt.v -= (height / 2);
  
    pt.h = max(0, min(pt.h, fDoc.fCols - width));
    pt.v = max(0, min(pt.v, fDoc.fRows - height));
  
    if (width > fDoc.fCols) {
      pt.h -= (width - fDoc.fCols - 1) / 2;
    }
  
    if (height > fDoc.fRows) {
      pt.v -= (height - fDoc.fRows - 1) / 2;
    }

exsf0859• 7 months ago

That particular code is idiomatic to anyone who worked with 2D bitmap graphics in that era.

pt == point, r == rect, h, v == horizontal, vertical, BSR(...,1) is a fast integer divide by 2, ORD4 promotes an expression to an unsigned 4 byte integer

The algorithms are extremely common for 2D graphics programming. The first is to find the center of a 2D rectangle, the second offsets a point by half the size, the third clips a point to be in the range of a rectangle, and so on.

Converting the idiomatic math into non-idiomatic words would not be an improvement in clarity in this case.

(Mac Pascal didn't have macros or inline expressions, so inline expressions like this were the way to go for performance.)

It's like using i,j,k for loop indexes, or x,y,z for graphics axis.

pixelesque• 7 months ago

As other comments have mentioned, context does matter, and as someone with a lot of 2D image/pixel processing experience, other than the 'BSR' and 'ORD4' items - which are clearly common in the codebase and in that era of computing, all that code makes perfect sense.

Also, breaking things down to more atomic functions wasn't the best idea for performance-sensitive things in those days, as compilers were not as good about knowing when to inline and not: compiler capabilities are a lot better today than they were 35 years ago...

georgemcbay• 7 months ago

The code's functionality is immediately obvious to me as someone who works a lot with graphics coordinate systems.

I'm sure the code would be immediately obvious to anyone who would be working on it at the time.

Comments aren't unnecessary, they can be very helpful, but they also come with a high maintenance cost that should be considered when using them. They are a long-term maintenance liability because by design the compiler ignores them so its very easy to change/refactor code and miss changing a comment and then having the comment be misleading or just plain wrong.

These days one could make some sort of case (though I wouldn't entirely buy it, yet) that an LLM-based linter could be used to make sure comments do not get disconnected from the code they are documenting, but in 1990? not so much.

Would I have used longer variable names for slightly more clarity? Today, sure. In 1990, probably not. Temporal context is important and compilers/editors/etc have come a long way since then.

coldtea• 7 months ago

Are you familiar with the domain?

Because it's quite clear, everything is well named, and the filename also gives the context.

ozfive• 7 months ago

Finds the center of a rectangle r Positions a width × height region centered on that rectangle.

Clamps the result so it doesn’t go outside the document.

If the region is bigger than the document, it re-centers instead of snapping to (0,0).

snvzz• 7 months ago

To download the code you must agree to the terms of the license, which permits only non-commercial use and does not give you the right to license it to third parties by posting copies elsewhere on the web.

Note this is a toxic license. Accepting it and/or reading of the code has potential for legal liability.

Still, applaud releasing the source code, even if encumbered. Preservation is most important, and any legal teeth will eventually expire with the copyright.

kmoser2• 7 months ago

Note this is a toxic license. Accepting it and/or reading of the code has potential for legal liability.

How would this potentially expose you to legal liability?

fragmede2• 7 months ago

If anyone does leak it, you're on the list of suspects.

cramcgrab• 7 months ago

Wow! Writing photoshop while a phd student at Michigan! Wish current students would do some code

system2• 7 months ago

They are good at dancing for TikTok videos, though.

fragmede2• 7 months ago

Why do you think they don't?

incanus77• 7 months ago

I ran an exhibit of eight machines from my retrocomputing collection last year, including a 1986 Mac Plus with 1MB RAM running Photoshop 1.0. People really enjoyed it! It’s kind of remarkable what you can still do with it and how freeing it is to have singular focus in an app.

steve1977• 7 months ago

"His brother John, working at the movie visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic" is underselling John Knoll a bit - he became one of the more prominent figures there and won two Oscars for his work (and was nominated for more).

Taking his contribution for Photoshop into account, one could say that if you saw mainstream motion or still pictures in the Western world in the last three decades, you'll probably saw something influenced by him in one way or another.

jamesnorden• 7 months ago

Still better than GIMP... /s (maybe)

swammie• 7 months ago

I learned Photoshop while working with John at ILM in the 90's. Cool!

bahmboo2• 7 months ago

This code was likely written on a Macintosh Plus with a 9 in (23 cm) monochrome display that had a resolution of 512 × 342. Something to keep in mind. That's very little screen real estate (tiny!) and something that had to be respected. Writing long winded stuff had a cost in performance and maintainability. We sometimes wrote the documentation separately when needed. Sometimes that was printed out for ease of consumption. Then we have the issue that the Mac had only just been upgraded to 1MB of memory (4MB potentially) and only 800 KB floppy drive. And an 8 mhz processor.

Daub• 7 months ago

I used to demonstrate PS1 in my digital painting class. I would show that without a layer-based system it was still possible to create a composite using calculations feature. The process is incredibly simple… an alpha, a foreground and a background plus some addition and multiplication. Even art students understand it. I’m still blown away by how much functionality they managed to squeeze into an executable small encounter to email to someone.

FYI.., the version I used was registered to Apple. Apparently, the Knoll brothers demoed PS to apple and they promptly shared it amongst themselves and their buddies. Almost all illegitimate copies of it are derived from that pirated copy.

Fun fact… John knolls wife was the founding member of the Photoshop ‘Widows’ club… a home to people who have lost loved ones to software.

Adobe Photoshop 1.0 Source Code (1990)

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