Hello there! I’m a huge Star Wars fan, but I had no idea there was a link between George Lucas’ enduring space opera and Adobe Photoshop. Lucasfilm has a bit of a reputation for helping to kickstart major creative companies, including Pixar, THX, and of course, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). A conversation with Sr. Principal Designer at Adobe, Russell Preston Brown, and famed commercial photographer, Jeff Schewe, has highlighted the little-known link between Photoshop and Star Wars. This is a snippet from an episode of The Photoshop Archives (below), where the pair discuss Photoshop 1.0, what they think the secret of Photoshop is and more. It's a great watch! But back to Star Wars...
Adobe Photoshop was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Software engineer, Thomas, was studying for a PhD at the University of Michigan, while visual effects guru, John Knoll, was working for ILM (where he is now CCO) and would later work on the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition (1997) and the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.
Several stories exist as to exactly how the brothers came to work on the project. As Jeff explains in the video; “John was trying to get proprietary image formats from one system to another system,” so he turned to his brother to help him out. According to History of Information, Thomas wrote the code so he could display greyscale images on his Apple Macintosh Plus’ monochrome screen, which impressed his brother and encouraged the pair to collaborate. In both instances, the program that Thomas created would become the genesis of Photoshop.
Dock tells the same story, but quotes a passage from CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference, which quotes John Knoll as stating; “As Tom showed me his work, it struck me how similar it was to the image-processing tools on the Pixar [a custom computer used at ILM].” So there’s the link. Had John not worked at ILM, he might not have seen the program’s potential. And without Star Wars, ILM wouldn’t exist. Clearly, Photoshop's very existence was the will of the force.
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