Photoshop co-creators John Knoll (left) and Thomas Knoll (right), photo by Rafael Concepcion.

Last night Adobe, along with the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, celebrated 20 years of its flagship photo-manipulation application at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco.

You can check out our history of Photoshop on the site now. 

The event showcased the main updates to Photoshop over the years and featured a presentation by Adobe's senior creative director, Russell Brown. Russell's entertaining presentation included a working version of Photoshop 1.0.7 on an iPhone. The application was developed for the event by Ansca Mobile using Corona. The application only adjusts the levels of a photo, but it's a fun piece of nostalgia.

You can check out video of Russell demoing the application in the video below.

Ansca shares the backstory on the unreleased special-edition app on their blog:

Russell originally approached us shortly after we launched Corona 1.0, and his idea was that the “Levels” panel was the soul of the original Photoshop — and that it would be really cool to see it replicated on the iPhone. We even used the original pre-1.0 program icon, from when “PhotoHut” (as Photoshop was originally named) was first presented to Adobe.



We're hoping this app hits the App Store soon.

Happy birthday Photoshop.

-- Photoshop Memories --

The Founders of Photoshop tell the story of the application. 

The Mac|Life staff talk about their memories of Photoshop

My first real experience with Photoshop was version 3 while in college. I remember creating alpha channels for drop shadows and working with un-editable text. Five minutes to create a drop shadow seems ridiculous now thanks to Layer Styles. You kids have it too easy these days. 

-Robbie

As a 13 year old web designer, I begged my parents to pay for Photoshop 4 so I could make my 'N Sync fan page the number one on the web. Sadly, I never received that honor because I was stuck using Corel Paint. In high school, I joined the newspaper staff and finally had my first hands-on with the King of Image Editors. It was love at first sight, and my webpages were bangin' after that. I think. 

-Flo

Share your Photoshop experience in the comments below.