Are Graphics Tools Intuitive?
More interesting, though, a lot of readers were upset that I called Photoshop intuitive. Personally, I think the basic lasso editing tool and graphical painting metaphors are quite intuitive, and I think a spectral view is one of the best ways to visualize sound. These metaphors have become so familiar to computer users, in fact, that we forget they weren’t the creation of Adobe Photoshop at all. The lasso tool, and most other paint tools that are now as second-nature to us as windowed interfaces, are the invention of Bill Atkinson, while developing MacPaint for the original Mac (pictured at right, courtesy folklore.org): MacPaint Evolution [Andy Hertzfeld, folklore.org] It’s rare that someone really invents something, but in the case of the now-ubiquitous graphic editing metaphors on which most modern apps are based, Bill really did invent some of the basic tools. And I’ll argue with the commenters on digg: this doesn’t just make sense to graphics people. I remember being in school an
