Adobe released Photoshop exclusively for the Mac in 1990, with a Windows version following over two years later. The Knolls pitched their project to two companies in Silicon Valley- Adobe and Apple-and the rest is history. Over 25 years ago (in 1988), John and Thomas Knoll built the first version of Photoshop on a Macintosh computer because it was essentially the only computer with the color display and capacity to handle the program they were building. In the early days of graphic design and digital typography (the early 1980s), the Apple Macintosh was the first computer to truly allow for digital typography. Digital Typography and Adobe Photoshop Were Born on the Mac
So there is no real evidence for the old saying “Adobe software runs better on Macs.” Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and the rest were not designed to perform better on any particular operating system. It currently has no technical basis (in terms of performance and hardware) since Apple moved to using third party components from Intel and other companies.Īdobe has gone on record via their Adobe Hardware Performance White Paper to point out that the performance of their software comes down to specs, not operating system. In my opinion, the bias toward using Macs today is based on the long-standing history and tradition of graphic designers using Macs. It’s not a practical one (in my opinion), but it is a reason: t radition.
You will, in fact, be judged by whether or not you use or own a Mac as a g raphic designer. In reality, these “marketing optics” do matter to some people, even if they shouldn’t. Many designers feel that if they can’t afford a Mac, people won’t take them seriously, so they’ll even invest in buying a used Mac that costs twice as much as a newer PC. Many designers find themselves turned down for jobs if they prefer using a Windows PC rather than a Mac. Bravo.It’s astounding to me that the question of which operating system you should use is still a debate today. Adobe has struck a delicate balance between easy usability and control of ease-in and ease-out timing with Time Remapping’s handle controls. Sure, you could go for After Effects’ Time Warp effect that’s also now a welcome addition to Premiere Pro, but it’s not as quick, easy or interactive as Time Remapping, which uses frame blending rather than Time Warp’s more sophisticated and smoother (but slower) Optical Flow technology and pixel motion algorithm. Plus, the quality of the slow motion looks better than Premiere Pro’s old speed effects. You can click to add keyframes, and most importantly, these effects play back immediately and smoothly in real time on both Mac and PC. It’s as simple as clicking on a clip, and selecting Time Remapping in a drop-down menu. Adobe has always had speed effects in Premiere Pro, but now has borrowed its Time Remapping function from After Effects and made it much easier to use by bringing its controls right to the Premiere Pro timeline. The other gem in this new Premiere Pro version is a brilliantly designed speed tool called Time Remapping. And, when you’re in List View, only the search hits are shown instead of each one being highlighted among all the others as before.
Other than that, the best new file management tool is Smart Search, whose dynamic sorting lets you see search results as you type, just like the Spotlight search function in Mac OS X.
This is especially practical if you’re dealing with a complicated production with hundreds or thousands of clips. You’ll especially appreciate this feature if you prefer the Avid way of doing things, where you can visually categorize and classify shots according to bins and have them all laid out, perhaps on a second video monitor. Now you can have separate bins in either floating panels, docked with other panels, or nested as they were before. Before, bins would all open in the same panel, requiring lots of cumbersome clicking to jump between them. Adobe did add the most-often requested feature, the highly useful ability to create and open multiple bins (Adobe calls them Project Panels). Besides the astonishingly complete Mac port of Premiere Pro and Encore, there’s not much new in Premiere Pro CS3 itself for PC users.