A friend and I were discussing the capabilities of Photoshop, when he started to reminisce about a time when he had to perform image editing tasks before Photoshop was available. This peaked my interest as to what technology was available during the developmental years of computer graphics.

One solution that appeared in 1987 was the Pericolor 1000. It was a French computer-based graphics editing system used mainly for photo restoration in Europe. The software portion of the system ran on the Apple III, one of the first desktops computers introduced in 1980. The scanning portion of the system was a large external peripheral resembling a drum-style printer. Photos were scanned and the data saved onto large magnetic reel-to-reel tapes. The data could then be imported into the imaging application where retouching and manipulation could take place using an early version of a trackball for navigation and editing. The final result could then be sent to a large photo printer final output.

The interface for the application which mostly consisted of colored text to the right of the work area appears primitive when compared to today’s software. In addition, the computing power required to perform these functions in the 1980’s relied on a large cumbersome array of electronic hardware. These humble beginnings were part of the evolution of the computer graphics industry and helps us to appreciate our current technology.