In 1996, with [...]]]> It’s amazing to think about the importance of Photoshop in my life. As a graphic designer I have fired up Photoshop nearly every day for the last ten years, and for a few years prior to that, friends were doing the “firing up” and I was just along for the amazing ride.

In 1996, with the help of my friend Pete, I started designing logos for t-shirts. My first design was a pure bite of the Kiss logo – my brainstorm was that “kiss” (pronounced) backwards was “sick.” And so Sick was clothing was born. I took a paycheck and optimistically printed 100 t-shirts with my Sick-Kiss hybrid logo, including Gene staring out from the middle. One night Pete and I went down to Kinko’s to scan a Guitar Player magazine and a half hour later we were deep in an early version of Photoshop, chopping up the lettering to create my first logo.

I created many of my early logos with Photoshop, somehow never needing to get anything generated with Illustrator. I suppose many designs were based either on photographs, scanned images, hand drawn imagery and simple shapes or text.

About 6 months ago I got my hands of the Adobe Master Suite CS4 and I’ve spent a hundred hours or more in that version of PS. Just a few weeks ago CS5 was released and it looks amazing. I am teaching an online course in Graphic Design and I’m encouraging my students to download the trial – a behemoth at 1 GB (includes option to install “enhanced” version). On the preview page there is are some  small flash movies that show off some killer new functions, including HDR photo creation, complex selections and content-aware fill (check this last one out — you can erase an object in your picture and the program automatically fills in the background like the object was never there). This is too amazing. I may have to check out the trial version too.

Layers Magazine has an in-depth article with interviews with some Photoshop developers:

http://layersmagazine.com/photoshop-turns-20.html

Click image to view larger version.

This is two images layered in Photoshop – taken on Carlton St just west of College and Yonge, downtown Toronto.

Taken with Motorola cellphone.

View more of my photos!