Nowadays it’s impossible to find a professional website and even physical prints that is not digitally processed by Photoshop. In fact, almost every product or design today, including Hongkiat.com, has gotten help from Photoshop. More than 20 years on, it is still defining the universe of digital imaging, with no signs of slowing down.

Yet we know so few about who is behind it – key developers, whose names sit in front of the Photoshop splash screen we stare at every single time we launch the software. And now, driven by curiosity and gratefulness, it is my obligation to unfold the stories of 10 unsung heroes who forged and polished the Photoshop we rely on to make a good living. It’s time we celebrate them.

Recommended Reading: 40 People Who Changed the Internet

#1. Thomas Knoll

Photoshop, a mega software that shaped the world of digital imaging today, started from one person, Thomas Knoll. Knoll started Photoshop as a hobby to create code that displays grayscale image, and the initial success led him to create more image editing codes, which eventually became primal features of the now legendary Photoshop.

(Image Source: YouTube)

His humility is legendary too. When he was inducted by NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals), he responded with ‘Why would you want to induct me? I didn’t do anything special. Writing Photoshop was just something we did for fun back then.’ It is this attitude that culminates the selfless spirit of the Photoshop team, thus shaping a product built on awesome teamwork.

Thomas is still active in the Photoshop team until now, which is a rare path for most co-founders. He led the team until CS4, and his most recent work (at the time of this writing) is the Adobe Camera Raw plugin that processes raw image formats from digital cameras. His passion for Photoshop and digital imaging is unmatchable to this day.

#2. John Knoll

Although the name doesn’t appear in most versions of Photoshop’s splash screen except 1.0.7 and 2.0.1, John Knoll is another co-founder of the Photoshop. In fact he was the one who persuaded Thomas Knoll to turn his personal program into a commercial image editing software.

(Image Source: YouTube)

At the time, John Knoll was surprised at how similar Thomas’s program was to image processing software that charges $300/hour for basic photo retouching. He saw a future in affordable image editing software, and started to push Thomas to develop more features in spite of him still trying to finish his PHD study.

While working with Industrial Light and Magic, the company which develops visual effects for George Lucas’ motion picture company, John also created some image-processing routines, which later evolved into filters (lens flare!).

#3. Russell Preston Brown

No complex product can soar without the escort of the passionate evangelist, and for Photoshop, it’s Russell Preston Brown. Same with the Knoll brothers, Russell is one of the pioneers of Photoshop. On the Photoshop 1.0.7 splash screen only 4 names were listed at the time: Thomas Knoll, John Knoll, Steve Guttman, Russell Brown.

(Image Source: YouTube)

As Adobe’s Senior Creative Director, Russell Brown is the most devoted user of Photoshop, and he even evangelized the software with his mastery of design and Photoshop skills. He has been restlessly showcasing Photoshop’s potential in grand events like the Mac Summit, and offering his own tips and tutorials in his website. If you have ever seen his showcase, you could probably sense his passion (and a bit of insanity!) for Photoshop.

#4. Seetharanan Narayanan

Although he could probably retire and enjoy his life on certain tropical island, Seetharanan Narayanan chose to continue his work in Adobe. His name appears after the No.1 Thomas Knoll in the splash screen, so I’m sure you stared at his name a lot, particularly when your Photoshop is launching slowly.

(Image Source: PhotoshopNews)

And he truly deserves the honor, as Seetharanan Narayanan is the man that dedicated his best to make the Windows version of Photoshop possible, then made it multi-threadable. Now the Lead Adobe Photoshop Engineer, he also ported Adobe Lightroom to Windows. He doesn’t claim all the spotlight though but the benefit of having long names is that it is simply too unique to be ignored.

#5. Russell Williams

Russell Williams joined the Photoshop team right after its 4.0, and he was surprised with how small the team behind Photoshop was. But he soon realized that they were brilliant and exceptionally good at their work. They had a clear direction, making Russell believe that the product will eventually ship which is after all the thing every developer wants.

(Image Source: PhotoshopNews)

In Russell’s regular days, he sits with other principal scientists such as Seetharanan Narayanan and do the most important thing in his career: decide what’s next for Photoshop. That said, for now Russell Williams is looking forward to image forensics, where the traits of intentional image modification by criminals could be detected more clearly through images.

#6. Jeff Chien

If you have used the Healing Brush to remove the wrinkles and blemishes of your photo, you need to thank Jeff Chien. He’s the principal scientist in Adobe that help achieved the Healing Brush effect, which could fool your perceptive eyes with its blending nature. The effect is in fact rather complex when it comes to implementation. Nonetheless, he didn’t even know what RGB was back then!

(Image Source: YouTube)

Jeff Chien’s background is motivating for young computer scientists in developing countries. He was raised in a country without GameBoys and other fancy home entertainment equipment. But he did have access to a mainframe computer which everyone shared for very limited periods of time. Even in this limiting environment, he spent a lot of time learning, developing a solid background in math, which in the end helped score him a job in both Apple and Adobe.

#7. Maria Yap

Maria Yap trained as a professional, and started her photography and design study before the birth of Photoshop, thus she truly appreciates the amount of hectic work that is saved through the aid of Photoshop. After several years of cruel industrial training (aka freelancing), Maria finally joined the Adobe team offering her expertise.

(Image Source: Adobe Featured Blogs)

She now leads a team of product managers and evangelists to develop innovative applications for design, such as Adobe Revel. Maria volunteers herself as a judge for the Adobe Youth Voices Aspire Awards, and part of the reason could be the immense inspiration that radiate from the event. It is apparent that her life is all about Photoshop, design and family.

#8. Sarah Kong

Ever heard of the name, ImageReady? Well, you must be as old as me then. Back then we designed our graphics in Photoshop, then optimize it for the Web in ImageReady! And the switch button within the software is the work of Sarah Kong, an engineering manager who also worked on some helpful automation plugins like picture package and Web photo gallery.

(Image Source: PhotoshopNews)

Sarah thinks of Photoshop as an awesome product, made possible with exceptional teamwork. She also foresees a strong future of Photoshop in this social media driven world, with community features such as lens profile sharing for lens correction features.

#9. Bryan O’Neil Hughes

One requires courage and determination (and bit of luck!) to succeed in life, and Bryan O’Neil Hughes lived up the quote by joining the Photoshop team in 1999. Making his debut as a Quality Engineer, Bryan contributed by doing his best to destroy Photoshop internally with intensive testing. Besides, if you have tasted the juiciness of Liquify feature before, that also came from Bryan.

(Image Source: YouTube)

Bryan cares about users. During Photoshop’s 20th anniversary he did a survey with both Photoshop users and NAPP members to discover specific new features, or current user interface issues that were bugging them. Based on the data, they improved Photoshop CS5 and make it dominate the world of digital imaging again.

#10. John Nack

John Nack a.k.a Tiny Elvis, is the true composer of Photoshop. His role, Adobe Photoshop Senior Product Manager, ensured that he oversees the development of many distinctive features such as Adobe Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, Vanishing Point, and Smart Object which I use every day on my graphics and shapes.

(Image Source: PhotoshopNews)

He is inducted by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals in 2008, which is one of the highest honors you could ever receive in the industry. Nonetheless, his humility still shines on top of his achievements, with his friendly and informative Adobe’s blog as solid proof of his down-to-earth nature. Clearly humility is the core culture for Photoshop team members.

Reflection

In my search for information, the most common word I caught in the interviews was ‘teamwork’. And what’s even more amusing is, most of the time the interviewee pushes the credit to someone else in the team! I believe it’s that humble nature and cooperative spirit that keeps both Photoshop and its innovation going for more than 20 years and probably a lot more in the future.

Also if you’re reading this article, there’s a great chance that you’re a Photoshop addict like me! What would you like to say to these Photoshop pioneers and engineers? For me, a simple thank you is probably not enough! Let us know your words then, and tell us how Photoshop transformed your life!

Inspired by one of our readers comment from our previous, we are going to show you how to create a notification bar with a control button in this tutorial. The idea is that we will be able to hide or show the notification bar by clicking on a button – similar to the HelloBar.

• View Demo

As the title said, we will be doing this using (only) some CSS3 features. Well, let’s just get started.

Recommended Reading: Unobtrusive Website Toolbars To Help Increase User Engagement

HTML Markup

We start off by creating the document and structuring the HTML markups. It is worth noting that the HTML markup plays an important role in order for the “hide-n-show” function work properly, as the function will be built purely using CSS3, which is very sensitive to the element structure and position.

Add the HTML elements in the following order.

 <div class="notification-bar"> <input id="hide" type="radio" name="bar" value="hide"> <input id="show" type="radio" name="bar" value="show" checked="checked"> <label for="hide">hide</label> <label for="show">show</label> <div class="notification-text">Hello World, you can hide this notification by clicking the close button.</div> </div> 

As you can see from the above code, we added two radio inputs with their labels to control the notification bar visibility – and, by default, the input radio with an id of show is checked.

At this point, some of you might already get the picture on how this works. When the radio input with an id of hide is checked the notification bar will be hidden, and it will be displayed when the radio input an id of show is checked.

Styles

Let’s add some decorative styles to make the notification bar look a little nicer. This includes specifying the notification’s background color, the font color, hiding the radio input and adding representative icons to their labels.

 .notification-bar { position: absolute; width: 100%; } .notification-text { background-color: #2980B9; padding: 15px; color: #fff; font-size: 14px; text-align: center; position: absolute; width: 100%; } .notification-bar input { display: none; } .notification-bar label { cursor: pointer; color: #fff; position: absolute; z-index: 5; display: inline-block; text-indent: 100%; white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; } .notification-bar label[for=hide] { right: 15px; top: 11px; width: 24px; height: 24px; background: url('../img/close.png') no-repeat center center; } .notification-bar label[for=show] { width: 45px; height: 50px; border-radius: 0px 0px 3px 3px; right: 10px; background: url('../img/show.png') no-repeat center center #2980B9; } 

Then, our notification bar will turn out to like in the following screenshot.

It’s really simple. You can always add more styles, if you want to.

Build the Function

As we are using the input radio button, we are able to apply the CSS3 :checked pseudo-class and then target the elements that follow using the sibling selector.

 .notification-bar input[value=show]:checked ~ label[for=show] { -webkit-transition: ease 350ms; -moz-transition: ease 350ms; -o-transition: ease 350ms; transition: ease 350ms; -webkit-transform: translateY(-100%); -moz-transform: translateY(-100%); -o-transform: translateY(-100%); transform: translateY(-100%); } 

Given the above code, when the radio input with an id of show is checked, its associated label with the for=show attribute is moved to the top by 100% from its original position, whilst the additional transition property will make it move smoothly.

The button that is used to hide the notification bar should be visible, as you can see below.

Next, when the users click on the close button, the notification bar as well as the close button should move to the top and disappear. While the button that is used to pull it down should be back to its original position.

To do so, we can write the rule in this way.

 .notification-bar input[value=show]:checked ~ label[for=show], .notification-bar input[value=hide]:checked ~ label[for=hide], .notification-bar input[value=hide]:checked ~ .notification-text { -webkit-transition: ease 350ms; -moz-transition: ease 350ms; -o-transition: ease 350ms; transition: ease 350ms; -webkit-transform: translateY(-100%); -moz-transform: translateY(-100%); -o-transform: translateY(-100%); transform: translateY(-100%); } .notification-bar input[value=hide]:checked ~ label[for=show] { -webkit-transition: ease 350ms; -moz-transition: ease 350ms; -o-transition: ease 350ms; transition: ease 350ms; -webkit-transform: translateY(0%); -moz-transform: translateY(0%); -o-transform: translateY(0%); transform: translateY(0%); } 

Then, to show the notification bar, we can write the rule, as follows.

 .notification-bar input[value=show]:checked ~ label[for=hide], .notification-bar input[value=show]:checked ~ .notification-text { -webkit-transition: ease 350ms; -moz-transition: ease 350ms; -o-transition: ease 350ms; transition: ease 350ms; -webkit-transform: translateY(0%); -moz-transform: translateY(0%); -o-transform: translateY(0%); transform: translateY(0%); } 

Final Touch

Lastly, I would like to add a little animation effect when the page notification bar is firstly loaded. To do so, I create a @kyeframe rule, like so.

 @keyframes initiate { 0% { transform:translateY(-100%); } 50% { transform:translateY(-50%); } 100% { transform:translateY(0%); } } 

And assign the animation to the notification text container.

 .notification-text { background-color: #2980B9; padding: 15px; color: #fff; font-size: 14px; text-align: center; position: absolute; width: 100%; -webkit-animation: initiate 350ms ease; -moz-animation: initiate 350ms ease; -o-animation: initiate 350ms ease; animation: initiate 350ms ease; } 

Check out: Creating Advanced “Marquee” With CSS3 Animation

That’s all the codes we need. You can now see it in action in the demo page or download the source from the following links.

• View Demo
• Download Source

There is something about wood that sets them apart from other structural material. Unlike bricks, ceramics or steel, wood is organic, more natural and has a personality to it. The different textures you see on the surface of different kinds of wood marks its uniqueness and are great fodder for wallpapers and photography.

Be it the floor you walk on, the walls you lean on or out in its natural state, Wood is the theme taking center stage this Wallpaper Wednesday. Here are 19 hypnotic, unique and almost haunting wallpapers of wood.

Recommended Reading: Nature Wallpaper

White Wood Wallpaper Pack. Available in the following sizes: 320×480, 1600×1200, 2560×1600.

24 Years. Available in 3888×2592.

BG Knots And Wood Wallpaper. Available in 3888×2592.

Brokenmemories. Available in the following sizes: 640×960, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600.

Wood Texture Wallpaper. Available in 1400×900.

Darkwood Wallpaper. Available in the following sizes: 320×480, 640×960, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 2560×1600.

NFR – Wallpaper. Available in 1920×1200.

Timber. Available in the following sizes: 640×960, 1024×1024, 1920×1536, 2048×1536, 2560×1440, 2560×1600.

Silk Wood. Available in the following sizes: 640×960, 960×800, 1024×1024, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1400, 2560×1600.

Floor Wood. Available in 2560×1600.

Not Washed, Power Washed. Available in 2560×1440 and two version of wallpapers, grimey and less grimey deck.

Wood Macro. Available in various sizes.

On A Table. Available in the following sizes: 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900,1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 2560×1600, 2880×1880.

Nothing More To Say. Available in 1600×1200.

The Hole Wallpaper. Available in the following sizes: 1920×1200, 2560×1600.

Motionwood Wallpapers. Available in 1680×1050 and three color.

Wood Stripes. Available in 1440×1050 and two version of wallpapers.

Wicker. Available in the following sizes: 1024×768, 1280×700, 1280×960, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 2560×1600.

Summer Woodchips. Available in 1920×1080.