Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the application software Photoshop with a specific focus on how reviews serve as sites for mediating its cultural subjectivities. The first sections develop a conceptual framework for the research based on mediation theory followed by a more detailed discussion of how tracing Photoshop’s cultural biography can be used to analyze its mediation in a way that recognizes its status as part of technological processes and social contexts. The later sections apply this framework with a specific focus on Photoshop upgrades and how they are reviewed in magazine articles and newsgroups over the course of nearly 20 years.

Keywords

Application software configuration cultural biography mediation photoshop reviews

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Appadurai

(1986) Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In: Appadurai

(ed) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–63.

Arthur

(2010) How we learned to love photoshop, Guardian. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/11/photoshop-20-years-old-verb (accessed 1 March 2013).

Ashton

(2011) Upgrading the self: technology and the self in the digital games perpetual innovation economy. Convergence 17 (3): 307–321.

Bolter

Grusin

(2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Brown

Shepherd

(1995) Graphics File Formats: Reference and Guide. Greenwich: Manning Publications.

Bergvall-Kåreborn

Howcroft

(2013) The apple business model: crowdsourcing mobile applications. Accounting Forum 37: 280–289.

Couldry

(2008) Mediatization or mediation? Alternative understandings of the emergent space of digital storytelling. New Media and Society 10 (3): 373–391.

Couldry

(2012) Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Cambridge: Polity.

comp.graphics.apps.photoshop (2000, 1 6 2000) upgrading to 5.5? Available at: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.graphics.apps.photoshop/browse_thread/thread/cc5a7038e50dd0b6/e2916807400bd75b?#e2916807400bd75b (accessed 1 March 2012).

10.

Dovey

Kennedy

(2006) Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

11.

Drucker

McVarish

(2009) Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall.

12.

Flichy

(2007) Understanding Technological Innovation: A Socio-Technical Approach ( Carey-Libbrecht

, Trans.). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

13.

Filloux

(2012) Piracy is part of the digital ecosystem. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/23/monday-note-piracy-sopa (accessed 1 March 2013).

14.

Fuller

(2001) It looks like you're writing a letter. Telepolis . Available at: www.heise.de/tp/druck/mb/artikel/7/7073/1.html (accessed 1 March 2013).

15.

Fuller

(2003) Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.

16.

Grudin

(1990) The computer reaches out: The historical continuity of interface design. Paper presented at the ACM SIGHI Conference, Seattle, Washington, USA.

17.

Hesmondhalgh

(2007) The Cultural Industries (2nd edition). London: Sage.

18.

Hine

(2000) Virtual Ethnography. London: Sage.

19.

Jenkins

(2006) Convergence Culture: When Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

20.

Kopytoff

(1986) The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In: Appadurai

(ed) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 64–91.

21.

Lash

Lury

(2007) Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press.

22.

Lesage

(2013) Cultural biographies and excavations of media: context and process. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 57 (1): 81–96.

23.

Lievrouw

(2011) Alternative and Activist New Media. Cambridge: Polity.

24.

Lister

Dovey

Giddings

(2009) New Media: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed). New York: Routledge.

25.

McDonald

(2002) New Photoshop 7 Review. Available at: alt.graphics.photoshop; http://groups.google.com/group/alt.graphics.photoshop/browse_thread/thread/c94a93dbb64d7b76/e58dbd5ab0222474?q=review&lnk=ol&) (accessed 1 March 2002).

26.

Manovich

(2011) Inside photoshop. Computational Culture 1 (1): 1–12.

27.

Manovich

(2013) Software Takes Command. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

28.

Mansell

(2012) Imagining the Internet: Communication, Innovation, and Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

29.

Mansell

Silverstone

(Eds) (1996) Communication by Design: The Politics of Information and Communication Technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

30.

McClelland

(1993) Brilliant Strokes. Macworld 10 (9): 154–158.

31.

McFarlane

(1972) Digital pictures fifty years ago. Proceedings of the IEEE 60 (7): 768–770.

32.

McRobbie

(2004) ‘Everyone is creative’; artists as pioneers of the new economy? In: Silva

Bennett

(eds) Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life. Durham: Sociology Press, pp. 186–199.

33.

Oxford English Dictionary (3rd Ed) (2006) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

34.

Pfiffner

(2003) Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story. Berkeley: Peachpit Press.

35.

Poole

(1991) Pictures perfected. Macworld 8: 144–151.

36.

Reed

(2000) Domesticating the personal computer: the mainstreaming of a new technology and the cultural management of a widespread technophobia, 1964–. Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2): 159–185.

37.

Shustek

(2013) Adobe photoshop source code. Software Gems: The computer history museum historical source code series . Available at: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/adobe-photoshop-source-code/ (accessed 1 March 2013).

38.

SIIA (2007) SIIA anti-piracy: 2007 year in review SIIA anti-piracy. Washington: Software & Information Industry Association.

39.

Silverstone

(1994a) Television and Everyday Life. London and New York: Routledge.

40.

Silverstone

(1994b) The medium is the museum: on objects and logics in times and spaces. In: Miles

Zavala

(eds) Towards the Museum of the Future. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 161–175.

41.

Silverstone

(2005) The sociology of mediation and communication. In: Calhoun

Rojek

Turner

(eds) The Sage Handbook of Sociology. London: Sage, pp. 188–207.

42.

Silverstone

Hirsch

Morley

(1994) Information and communication technologies and the moral economy of the household. In: Silverstone

Hirsch

(eds) Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 15–31.

43.

Silverstone

Haddon

(1996) Design and the domestication of information and communication technologies: technical change and everyday life. In: Mansell

Silverstone

(eds) Communication by Design: The Politics of Information and Communication Technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press: pp. 44–74.

44.

Snider

(2010) Photoshop CS5 and CS5 Extended. Macworld 27 (7). Available at: http://www.macworld.com/article/1150938/pscs5rev.html (accessed 31 July 2014).

45.

Suchman

(2012) Configuration. In: Lury

Wakeford

(eds) Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. London: Routledge, pp. 48–60.

46.

Warnock

Wyatt

(1982) A device independent graphics imaging model for use with raster devices. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics 16 (3): 313–319.

47.

Williams

(2003) Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Routledge.

48.

Wolff

(1993) The Social Production of Art (2nd ed). New York: New York University Press.

49.

Woolgar

(1991) Configuring the user: the case of usability trials. In: Law

(ed) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London: Routledge, pp. 57–99.

50.

Yap

(2013) Breaking from tradition: photoshop CC. Available at: blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/breaking-from-tradition-photoshop-cc.html (accessed 1 August 2013).

Reviewing photoshop

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References