It?s hard to believe, but Photoshop is nearly 20 years old.
The original Apple Macintosh version was written in 1988 by brothers Thomas and John Knoll.
The first full version published by Adobe appeared on the Macintosh in 1990.
The entire program came on a single 1.44MB floppy disk.

Photoshop has grown and changed over the years, but has always
incorporated the latest developments, reinforcing its position as the industry
standard for professional image editing. The first Windows version
(v2.5) appeared in 1992, layers were introduced in version 3.0 in 1994,
multiple undo history in version 5.0 in 1998, and camera RAW support
was added with version 7.0 in 2002. The concept of Creative Suite,
incorporating and harmonising a whole range of Adobe?s other programs,
including ImageReady, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, Encore and AfterEffects,
was introduced in 2003 along with Photoshop 8.0, known as Photoshop CS.
An update, unsurprisingly called Photoshop CS2, came along less t
han two years later in April 2005, adding many new features such as Smart
Objects, a red-eye tool and the invaluable Spot Healing brush.

Here we are now in May 2007, and it?s update time again.
This time it?s Photoshop CS3, significantly the tenth version of the program,
and the most ambitious to date. It?s also somewhat larger than that original version
1.0, since it comes on a DVD and requires 1.5GB of disk space for installation.
Version 10.0 improves many existing features, adds some surprising
new ones, and also greatly improves the appearance of the user
interface, something which has needed doing since version 7.0.
Photoshop is launched along with the rest of the newly revamped Creative Suite 3,
but is of course available as a stand-alone program.

Faster starting
The first improvement you?ll notice is in start-up times.
Obviously absolute performance will vary depending
on the specification of your system, but on my PC
(Windows XP Pro, Intel Core2 Duo 1.8GHz, 2GB DDR2, SATA2 HD)
starting CS3 after re-booting the computer took just over 18 seconds,
against 22 seconds for CS2, but it is in subsequent start times that the
biggest improvement is noticeable. Shut down the program, do something
else for a while and then start it up again, and Photoshop CS2 will be up and
running in about seven and a half seconds, which is amazingly fast for such
a large and complex program. However CS3 more than halves that time,
re-starting in just 3.2 seconds. Further performance tweaks include
improved compatibility with dual-core processors and Windows Vista.

Running it on a PC (Windows)? You'll need:
Processor: Intel Xeon, Xeon Dual, Centrino, or Pentium 4 Processor
System: Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, Longhorn, Vista
RAM: 320 MB (384 MB recommended)
Hard-disk: 1.5 GB
Monitor: 1024 x 768 monitor resolution, 16-bit video card
Video RAM: 64 MB
CD-ROM Drive: CD-ROM Drive required
Activation / Updater Internet or phone connection required for product activation