Ann Arbor resident receives lifetime innovator award for developing Photoshop

Thomas Knoll began manipulating pixels back in 1987 as a University of Michigan student. No one could have guessed that 20 years later, the product that it developed into Photoshop, would remain the most-widely used image manipulation software on the market.

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Knoll, a longtime Ann Arbor resident with his wife, Ruth, received Business Review's Lifetime Innovator award Oct. 4 at the second annual "Innovation Michigan" event at The Henry Ford Museum.

Knoll could have left for greener pastures many years ago, considering that Adobe is based in San Jose, Calif.

But the software genius has always liked Ann Arbor better - primarily because he likes the changing of the seasons here and hates the traffic in California.

In a rare interview, Knoll marveled at the longevity of Photoshop. He said the only program that has matched its prominence is the software suite Microsoft Office.

"It's remarkable that it's managed to stay at the top of its market," Knoll said of Photoshop. "There aren't many programs that are still the state of the art in their fields after so long."

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