Thomas and John Knoll created Adobe Photoshop in 1987 initially as a simple program to display grayscale images on a monochrome display, completely unaware of the monstrous cultural shift they were about to trigger.

A closer look

Thomas and John Knoll created Adobe Photoshop in 1987 initially as a simple program to display grayscale images on a monochrome display, completely unaware of the monstrous cultural shift they were about to trigger. Their clever little image manipulation tool quickly evolved into the absolute industry standard, eventually becoming a verb that represents the complete distortion of physical reality for the sake of marketing and social media vanity. Before this software existed, changing a photograph required hours of meticulous darkroom chemistry, but now any deeply insecure teenager can drastically alter their bone structure with just a few lazy swipes of a healing brush tool. The Knoll brothers essentially invented the technology that directly caused an entire generation's body image issues, all because they wanted a better way to look at digital pictures on a Macintosh