Fake story, real UI –Photoshop in the movies
From the Evernote archives…
Hollywood is well known for fake UI in movies – you know, “Unix is easy“1 or the “VB GUI Interface“. I’d say most geeks get a kick of seeing just how removed from reality Hollywood computers can be.
I was very surprised then to spot a familiar looking application during a scene in the movie “National Treasure” (a fairly forgettable movie otherwise):
I think to myself “Wait. Isn’t that…?“. As if reading my mind, the Director zooms in for a closer look:
Yup that’s Photoshop alright.
What? You don’t believe me. Ok, I created a comparison image those of you who say “fake”:
If that’s a fake, that’s a damn good one. I wonder if Adobe got any royalties for the use of their software in the movie. If they didn’t, I’d say they have pretty good grounds for a lawsuit right there 
PS: That blue wallpaper in the background looks awfully familiar too. Any mac-heads can confirm/deny?
- Whoa! I did not realize this, but apparently the UI on screen during this screen is real! See this wikipedia article. Thanks Ashwin! [↩]
This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on February 9, 2009 at 8:41 pm Ashwin Nanjappa wrote:
It could be an old Photoshop running on Mac or something.
PS: The Jurassic Park UI is real. I know this because I’m a *huge* Jurassic Park fan
See fsn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn
on February 10, 2009 at 8:04 pm Balaji wrote:
Ashwin – Whoa! I did not know that
. I’ve updated the article now. Can’t find any screenshots of the original FSN browser though 
. Have you seen any?
I think it’s Photoshop CS2 running on OS X Tiger, but I’m not sure of the versions..
on February 11, 2009 at 8:29 pm Ashwin Nanjappa wrote:
Some screenshots:
http://hwr.nici.kun.nl/gifs/fsn.gif
http://www.useit.com/papers/information_overload/fsn1.png
http://iv.xight.org/images/FSN.png
http://www.javipas.com/wp-content/_FSN.png
on March 28, 2009 at 2:11 am Prithvi wrote:
I did a search on the standard backgrounds Mac offers and didn’t find a perfect match, although it looks similar to a couple of them.
That said, I’m running Leopard. I don’t know if Leopard’s backgrounds are different from Tiger’s.
on March 29, 2009 at 12:10 pm Balaji wrote:
Prithvi – thanks for the info. I do know that the default wallpapers are different for OS X Leopard and OS X Tiger. I had OS X Tiger installed on my PC as a VM for a while and seem to recall the stock wallpaper looked similar: http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/tiger_01.jpg
on January 24, 2010 at 6:23 pm qwerty wrote:
linux gimp
in movies its best if theyuse real operative systems to increase credibility
but they dont use comercial OS due to licenses restrictions like if macdonalds gona eat in brguerking