Real World Adobe Creative Suite 2

It's hard to believe, but when we started working with Photoshop, Illustrator, and page-layout software, there was no live transparency. Up until version 3, Photoshop did not have separate layers for artwork. This meant that once you changed the opacity on a selection, you couldn't go back the next day to increase or decrease the effect. Fortunately, Adobe added live transparency to Photoshop 3, including effects that let you see through layers, apply drop shadows, add glows, and more. Even better, you could change those effects whenever you wanted.

Later, transparency was added to Illustrator 9, InDesign 2, and Acrobat 5. It was the beginning of a new era, and art directors and designers started applying transparency effects all over the place.