Meet the Chennai man who brought Adobe Photoshop to masses

NEW DELHI: Adobe Photoshop is the most popular photo-editing software today with nearly 10 million users. In India, if anyone knows the word 'computer', you can safely assume he would also know of Photoshop.

Even though his name appears second in the list of credits when you open Photoshop, very few know it was an engineer from Chennai who made Photoshop popular.

Before 1993, Photoshop was available only in Macintosh which was used by select people. Seetharaman Narayanan, senior principal scientist and one of the founding members of Photoshop, spread the software all over the world by bringing it to Microsoft’s Windows platform which was used by the masses.

“Bringing to Windows led to mass usage of Photoshop in a few years as Microsoft expanded its reach globally dramatically. It also boosted Adobe revenue substantially,” Narayanan told BusinessLine.

Narayanan grew up in Mylapore, Chennai, graduated from REC Trichy and joined Adobe in 1991.

Based in San Jose, Narayanan comes to Chennai twice a year. He was in the city recently to address an event organised by IIM Calcutta Alumni Association.

“We have only scratched the surface in India right now. As people get to understand that software is value, people should pay for it,” Narayanan told BusinessLine talking about the subscription-based business model of Photoshop.

“I don’t think people would pirate. If they derive value out of the software, I believe they will pay,” he said.

Adobe’s business in India is growing after it shifted Photoshop to a subscription-based model three years ago. Its photography plan is for $10 a month. According to Narayanan, if you make a living out of being a creative, $10 is not lot of money.