Hal Lovemelt - first person ever Photoshopped?

Yesterday, video mixologist Hal Schuler announced a shocking - if somehow unsurprising - revelation: that he was the first person to ever be Photoshopped. Or, more technically speaking, the first to be the subject of digital image editing. That's a difficult fact to confirm, but his story seems plausible enough - and fitting, being that he's one of the forces behind interactive video design company Playatta. Apparently, his aunt Kai was a software developer, and used her nephew as her first subject in 1989. Here is the resulting image:


He shares his Aunt Kai's explaination on Facebook:

"The software at that time was called Digital Darkroom and it was top secret and in internal development. My biggest challenge is that no one understood what image editing was and a lot of people were skeptical that everyday people would ever use it. I believed in the product and wanted to bring it to market but I needed a graphic representation that everyday people could relate to. I gave my product manager a bunch of family photos that I had taken in Hawaii and he created this from the cute photo of you. I had told him that Mike and you were visiting San Diego so he made this first version (That's why it says welcomes Hal and his brothers). Granted it's still not a very practical representation of real world use (how many people need to transform their kids into taller or shorter versions?) but because it was cute, it captured everyone's attention. When we rolled out the product at MacWorld, we had demo computers set up at our booth and transforming you was the demo. We had some nicer collateral handouts with a better version but this little paper is all that survived."

If Hal indeed really is the first person to be Photoshopped, that's a pretty cool claim to fame.

Submitted by @jahnapeloquin