In 1987, Thomas Knoll, a PhD pupil at the College of Michigan began composing a show on his Macintosh And to present grayscale images on a monochrome display. This program, called Display, caught the attention of his brother John Knoll, an Industrial Light & Miracle personnel, that recommended that Thomas turn it in to a fully-fledged image editing and enhancing course. Thomas took a six-month breather from his studies in 1988 to join forces with his sibling on the show.

Thomas relabelled the show ImagePro, yet the term was currently taken. Later that year, Thomas relabelled his course Photoshop and also worked out a short-term special offer with scanner manufacturer Barneyscan to disperse photocopies of the show with a slide scanner; a "total of about 200 copies of Photoshop were delivered" this technique. During this time, John traveled to Silicon Valley and granted an exhibition of the program to engineers at Apple and Russell Brown, art executive officer at Adobe.