This Is How Difficult Photoshop 2.5 Was To Use Back Then

Photoshop hasn't always been so powerful when it comes to features. This is how difficult it was to edit photos with no layers, styles, and only one undo back then.

Many moons ago, Adobe Photoshop had fewer features than it does today. The first incarnations of the editing software couldn't even use layers or styles. These limitations may sound hard to believe today, but it's what many retouchers starting off had at their disposal. One of these retouchers was Colin Smith of VideoRevealed who recently recounted his experiences of using the program back in the 1990s.

In this jam-packed video, Smith walks us through literally hundreds of examples of his work from his advertising days and how he had to painstakingly make his creations with the most basic of tools. We hear about everything from adding realistic shadows to objects to "cloning" out people all without the powerful features we are used to in the current versions of Photoshop. It really is crazy to hear Smith talk about many of the tasks taking him hours or days to do when today those jobs would only take a matter of minutes to achieve.

While this video is unlikely to give you any major technical pointers on how to edit your work today, the examples shown may give you a newfound appreciation of how much heavy lifting Photoshop does for you. Hearing Smith's account of his days as a retoucher feels like a walk down memory lane with an old friend who has many amazing pictures to help visualize the stories. If you fancy a look back at how hard it was to do even the most basic of edits in Photoshop, this video is well worth a look.

What do you think of these stories of Photoshop from the 1990s? Could you have used the program with so few features? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.