The codename of Photoshop v. CS5 [12.0] is White Rabbit.

Photoshop CS5 White Rabbit - official splash screen

Adobe like to invent various “codenames” for their apps, when a new major development cycle starts. For example, Fireworks CS5 was “Starman”, Dreamweaver CS5 — “Bowie”, Illustrator CS5 — “Ajanta”, etc. (I mention specific names because I don’t think they are such a big secret, and because the CS5 apps were released officially more than 2 months ago, at the beginning of May).

But there’s something that maybe not a lot of people know — initially on the splash screen of Ps CS5 White Rabbit there was… a white rabbit! Later, of course, this splash screen was replaced with the “official” one for the CS5 series (in the case of Ps CS5, it reminds me a bit of a blue fish, turned to the right).

Photoshop CS5 White Rabbit - the unofficial splash screen

(I do not use Photoshop (or very rarely), but it happened that I tried it a couple of times.)

If you’d like to see this hidden “unofficial” splash screen, hold Ctrl (Cmd) while clicking on the About Photoshop item from the Help menu.

As far as I’ve found, the screen was drawn by Daniel Presedo (from the Ps QE team), and I think it is even better than the later “official” version… :)

5 thoughts on “Photoshop CS5 “White Rabbit” (the hidden splash screen)

  1. I have the Blue splash how can I make the White Rabbit the perminant splash screen. I was ablt to make the Space Monkey perminant in CS2

  2. @Matt:

    Technically, you can make any splash screen your default one, in most of the CS5 apps– including Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. There are a lot of tutorials on the subject — but let me know if you need any help! :)

  3. @Michel

    Yeah I do need a little help, I don’t know how to make it the default splash screen. I know how to alter .dll files and all that I just don’t know which files, but I also need to change everything on the splash not just the picture. Example: on the standard splash the credit are on the right, on the hidden splash it’s on the bottom.

    Thanks for your help Michel.

  4. @Matt:

    A few notes:

    1) You can change the splash screen in Ps CS5 (and not only Ps, but also Ai, Fw, Dw, etc.). You have to modify just one .dll library in the directory where Photoshop is installed. It is relatively easy, and I think I know which .dll you should modify so that you can replace your splash screen.

    I plan to blog about the process in the upcoming days, so simply subscribe to the RSS of my blog to learn when! :)

    2) About moving around the credits: That is hard to do. The splash screen is just an image (usually a .bmp or .png file, contained within a .dll; the latest splash screens in Adobe CS5 apps are PNG files). However, where the credits will appear is programmed on a much deeper level, and unless you are a programmer (or a hacker;) I don’t think they can be moved. However, you can simply edit the splash screen in such a way so that the credits in both splash screens fit well, and this is what I would recommend to you!

    Hope this helps, and stay tuned for my tutorial on how to change the splash screen in Ps CS5! ;)

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