Can Photoshop be beaten?
You know a product has become very popular when it becomes a verb.
"Hey, send me that file and I'll photoshop it for you".
I've noticed that Apple and Adobe's relationship has become somewhat "strained" over the years. Adobe is a large company now that must work hard to increase revenue and profits. This got me thinking.
Photoshop is Adobe's Crown Jewel along with Postscript. It has defeated all challengers. Xres, Live Picture, TIFFany etc. Photoshops inertia is difficult to overcome. It has legions of users and a cottage industry of supporting products.
With all of this. What would cause the masses to leave Photoshop for something else? Would it be speed? Would it be Price? Would it be features. Can photoshop even be beat or is it suicide to try?
Apple had Final Cut Pro just drop into their lap. Randy Ubillos had basically delivered the blueprints...Macromedia balked and the rest is history. There doesn't seem to be anything similar today. No new paradigm for photo editing. Live Picture in all it's resolution independance is gone. Source Code locked up and unavailable.
Painter has gone nowhere under Corels control. TIFFany has closed up shop.
What would it take to spark a new revolution?
"Hey, send me that file and I'll photoshop it for you".
I've noticed that Apple and Adobe's relationship has become somewhat "strained" over the years. Adobe is a large company now that must work hard to increase revenue and profits. This got me thinking.
Photoshop is Adobe's Crown Jewel along with Postscript. It has defeated all challengers. Xres, Live Picture, TIFFany etc. Photoshops inertia is difficult to overcome. It has legions of users and a cottage industry of supporting products.
With all of this. What would cause the masses to leave Photoshop for something else? Would it be speed? Would it be Price? Would it be features. Can photoshop even be beat or is it suicide to try?
Apple had Final Cut Pro just drop into their lap. Randy Ubillos had basically delivered the blueprints...Macromedia balked and the rest is history. There doesn't seem to be anything similar today. No new paradigm for photo editing. Live Picture in all it's resolution independance is gone. Source Code locked up and unavailable.
Painter has gone nowhere under Corels control. TIFFany has closed up shop.
What would it take to spark a new revolution?
Comments
adobe, as far as i've seen, continues to push their products further and further. they've only really shown a few lapses of attention, such as premiere. but photoshop really just keeps getting better and better.
Buggy as hell, but it's free.
Originally posted by admactanium
i don't think photoshop is beatable at the moment. the only thing that keeps anything dominant is continuing innovation. the reason syquest got beat by zip was that they were arrogant and continued to screw customers while getting lazy. i think syquest's fate is also quarks in comparison to indesign.
adobe, as far as i've seen, continues to push their products further and further. they've only really shown a few lapses of attention, such as premiere. but photoshop really just keeps getting better and better.
....and Iomega got beat by CD-R for the same reasons. Ironic, isn't it?
1) Zip is snazzy name
2) Zip disks were cheaper than EZ135 disks
3) Zip disks looked more durable...despite having horrid long-term reliability issues to this day.)
The same goes for Jaz vs SyJet...
I don't remember any blatant display of arrogance from SyQuest.
What it is cool is that the app can handle super large file even on a slow ass machine with only 32MB RAM....
Biggest drawback.....VERY HARD TO USE and a lot of PS filters (over 95%) don't work with the app....and not to mention the price (costed twice as much as PS back then)
...and later RAM became dirt cheap so working with large file in PS is no longer an issue.....
.....then LP had to drop the price by 80% in order to stay competitive....but it was too late....
I admit..the interface was confusing but the Resolution independance and speed had promise.
Live Picture just stopped developing it like they should have. They started focusing on Web Stuff that made no sense( Great "vision" Sculley grrrrrr).
Then when it died they killed the code. Didn't sell it or anything. I swear there's a layer of corruption in the computer industry that has apps like LP and Mtropolis, both of which offered promise, killed and buried out of sight.
I like Photoshop but I hate having One Standard. Well I guess if Apple keeps pissing Adobe off they might just have to compete heheh.
An alternative becomes viable when there's a significant complaint against the standard. DTP — and the Mac — took over publishing despite their obvious initial disadvantages because they were much cheaper and much more intuitive than the dedicated machinery that was standard at the time. As long as Adobe keeps refining the app and keeps the price accessible, they have a lock: Even if someone comes up with a competitor it'll be any number of versions before it's slick enough to really compete, and at that point there still won't be any real reason for anyone to consider it. Where would InDesign be if Quark didn't suck (as a company)?
The nearest problem I can see Adobe running into is the direction they've been headed in for a few years now, away from the Mac. Intel is funneling lots of money and lots of engineers to them to make PS run as well or better on their platform, and it's starting to show. But it will have to hit a crisis point before Mac designers get so fed up that they are willing to take a hit on features and polish by adopting an upstart, and that's assuming that they don't just follow Adobe over to Windows. Fortunately, Windows appears to be entering a crisis of its own...
Sadly, it was bought out...I think by Macromedia. There are probably a couple hundred bytes of code left in Fireworks or something...
Originally posted by Artman @_@
Aldus PhotoStyler or something like that was good. Had a lot of features ahead of Photoshop (layers!).
That was back when PS was still more vulnerable than it currently is, though. If I remember right, anyway.
[aside]The single great evil of hidden, commercial software is that once it's taken out of print for whatever reason, it's just gone. It's a terrible loss to the industry.[/aside]
The problem is that Photoshop is a mature application at this point. It would take any would-be competitor any number of versions to come near not only PS' feature set, but all the little bits of polish and usefulness that Adobe learned to put in over all the years.
Substitute Photoshop for Microsoft Word/Office in the above. Not quite apples to apples, but this is the same issue Apple faces with iWorks.
Every tool serves its purpose. Where Photoshop is not enough, there appear other apps. But in its own field and for its purposes Photoshop is, well, not exactly unbeatable, it's indespensable. As we can only live here and now, there's nothing like Photoshop that is better than it. However, history has taught us that every empire has to fall sooner or later and it leaves a chance for something to surpass even Photoshop.
Originally posted by kcmac
Substitute Photoshop for Microsoft Word/Office in the above. Not quite apples to apples, but this is the same issue Apple faces with iWorks.
Not really, because I don't hear nearly as much cursing in the direction of Photoshop.
Excel is the only part of Office that really will be difficult to challenge, because it's the only part that really is robust and easy to use relative to its power. If Apple can lick the file compatibility issue and offer the features, the rest of the suite is vulnerable.
Based on my own observations, Apple could increase office productivity about threefold just by toppling Word.
Originally posted by Amorph
Based on my own observations, Apple could increase office productivity about threefold just by toppling Word.
Well, if by toppling you mean, more people will realize Apple's office productivity suite is better than MS, it's unlikely.
Heck, look at iDVD and iMovie...two apps that don't, IMO, have equals on the PC side. You'd think a lot people that want to author DVDs and have fun making movies would buy a Mac but doesn't seem like it.
I think it's really weird. Apple already has some quality consumer apps...most of them free. Considering a large chunk of the computer-using population are consumers and not pros, you'd think everyone would flock to Mac but this isn't the case.
What is Apple doing wrong? What does it take to show the consumers that Macs truly are easier to use and have more quality apps than Windows?
At this point I don't understand what the problem is. Is it Apple's price premium that scares everyone away? Is it the old fear that once you get a Mac you might as well kiss compatibility goodbye? Really, what is it?
Consumers don't do much with their computers...surf the web, e-mail, IM, listen to music...Apple has brought video editing to them and DVD authoring...and soon maybe office productivity. This is the perfect consumer package yet it's not attracting much anyone.
I'm at loss.
But way back before Windows 95 when Mac OS was clearly superior in every frickin' way...you'd think everyone would ditch DOS and Win3.11, but that didn't happen? Masochists? That's my only explanation.
So what exactly is it? A hardware price issue? Because no matter how big the quality and ease-of-use gap is, it's not changing a thing. If I were to draw any conclusions about consumers in the computer market I'd say: people are more willing to pay less for shit than more for quality.
Is this how people's mind's work? Always pay less no matter the quality?
Originally posted by kim kap sol
If I were to draw any conclusions about consumers in the computer market I'd say: people are more willing to pay less for shit than more for quality.
Is this how people's mind's work? Always pay less no matter the quality?
yup your right. like when most people go buy a phone they get the free one, when they buy a pda they get the cheapest palm. The average person buying a computer will by the cheapest thing. Or they listen to the people in the store who tell them to buy last years model of an hp they want to get rid of.
Funny thing, when I read the thread title I thought we were talking in videogame-ese. I was going to say that I've gotten to level 50 before, but I've never beaten Photoshop! That buzzing cat boss was wicked cool though!
Originally posted by kim kap sol
[B]Well, if by toppling you mean, more people will realize Apple's office productivity suite is better than MS, it's unlikely.
Yeah, but I was using that scenario to describe the inefficiency of Word, not because I think enterprise will drop Office like a bad habit as soon as Apple rolls out an alternative. When has that ever happened?
What is Apple doing wrong? What does it take to show the consumers that Macs truly are easier to use and have more quality apps than Windows?
The problem is twofold: First, marketing is about features, and Macs are about quality of implementation. Every ad campaign implies superior quality even if it's not true (vis., the Gateway Profile ads), so consumers are totally jaded to that claim. Windows has superficially caught up, in terms of marketing bullet points. You have to actually use a Mac to realize what the advantage is. That's come out as a common theme in the non-Apple switcher accounts I've read.
Even if Apple used the "it just works" slogan, which is probably the best distillation of the Mac difference now, it might not have an effect. Who doesn't claim that their products work easily and flawlessly?
Is it the old fear that once you get a Mac you might as well kiss compatibility goodbye? Really, what is it?
That's still a biggie.
Back to Photoshop, mad props to drewprops for a salient point: Photoshop is a platform, not a standalone application, because of the plugin architecture (and also to the extent that it's scriptable). So the pain of switching over extends beyond swapping in a PS alternative.
Originally posted by kraig911
I've heard about this one app called graphic equalizer? I think it was called? it was made by the guys who did ProTools I have heard great things about it, especially . But I don't think its meant for photoediting as it is painting and compositing.
I hope that's not what it's called Graphic Equalizer would be the worst choice ever for a name.
Yes indeed Dewprops is right. A competitor would have to sell existing PS users on a "new" Platform that offered much more potential than PS yet was mature from day one. That's a tall order. Good luck to anyone who tries.