moocow - Are you sure that Pixar made Photoshop? I think that Photoshop was Adobe's original brainchild.

I assume most of you have seen this, but since people are debating it, I thought you might need a refresher.

From:

http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/jobs/faq.html

What animation software do you use and what do you recommend to those hoping to work for a company like Pixar in the future?

Pixar uses its own proprietary software called Marionette, built and maintained in-house.

Here are thoughts about getting into Pixar and what they look for:

"In general, at Pixar we look for broad artistic and technical skills, rather than ability to run one package or another. We concentrate on finding people with breadth, depth, communication skills and the ability to collaborate. If you have those attributes, we can teach you the tools."

Here is a look at what Pixar is hiring for now to give you an idea:

http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/jobs/openings.html

Sorry folks, a little bit o' PS history here:

The original program "Liquify" that we now know as "Photoshop", was originally written by John Knoll (VFX supervisor at ILM) and his brother Thomas Knoll for the 2d "liquid" textures on the Psudopod creature for the movie "The Abyss".

It only had 4 features to start with:
- Polar Coordinates
- Lens Flare (now part of the aptly titled "Knoll Lens Flare" plugin available for most 2d compositing apps.
- Invert
- Twirl

Thomas Knoll is still listed on the Photoshop start-up screen.
He's the first name if you look closely:)

Ironicly, Adobe recently added a "Liquify" feature to PS, that has nothing to do with the first program name. Weird.

John Knoll still writes a LOT of ILM plugins for "CARY", short for Caricature, ILM's proprietary character animation software.
Which, btw, is, in itself, a plugin for Maya and Softimage.

Just thought I would pass that info along.

...end of history lesson for today:)