New Adobe app to take on Apple's Aperture - Page 2

I'm not saying that I disagree with you about Apple's developement, but it isn't correct to say that they develop all of their own software. At least not from scratch.

iTunes was bought from Casady & Greene. It was called SoundJam.

DVDStudio was bought (as three seperate programs) from Astarte, a German developer. Don't recall all of the names right now.

FCP was bought from Macromedia, program name unknown to me.

Shake was also bought.

Logic Pro, again, was bought.

Apple has also bought other programs in the past. Some ended up in the OS itself.

Companies rarely buy another company for their products. You are right that it would cost less to develop their own.

They buy them for their market. All of the customers who are already buying their products. It might cost 10 million to develop a medium sized program, but how much would it cost to buy the $500 million in sales a competitors brings in every year?

uuh, melgross, maybe you should read my third paragraph.

I'll tell you what, I'll read your third paragraph again, if you read my first sentence again.

Deal?

Hmm, unless it has been going downhill for Adobe, you'll have to go a very long way back to find an Adobe with twice the revenue of Apple.

The year before the iPod Apple had a revenue of $5.74B.

Ha, ha. This is the problem with the Adobe suite. There are all these very powerful but relatively un-integrated applications. That's fine if your entire life is dedicated to creating graphics and documents from scratch (in which case Create Suite is heaven), but if you're a photographer...

Well, if you're a photographer, are you going to want to use Bridge to manage your photos, ACR to convert them, InDesign to print layouts, Acrobat to create PDFs, Photoshop to edit them, etc., etc.

In a word: No.

Waaaaaay too complicated. Powerful, yes, but way too complicated for someone who takes photographs for a living (or an advanced amateur).

That's the appeal of Aperture. It's easy. It's powerful. And, well, it has a few issues. Competition from Adobe is a great thing for Aperture.

If you're an amateur, maybe not.

But as that's exactly what the professional photographic, publishing, and graphics businesses ARE doing.

You like to wrap everything around the poor little semi professional who does this part-time.

We all know these guys. I have a bunch in my MUG. But, even most of them use PS and Illustrator. They also use Quark or inDesign if they need it.

I don't know why you pretend this isn't true.

Maybe this stuff is too complicated or expensive for you. But don't project yourself over to everyone else.

There is a difference in what you do and what you really want to do (which I think was his point).

Yes they tend to use the whole suite, but is that really the best way to do it? Use 3-4 different apps to manage and print photos?

I guess they use the apps because there hasn't been a better alternative.

His point, if you've followed this from a couple of months ago, is to knock a non Apple product, and to pretend that Aperture, even if it worked as it should, can replace Adobe's suite for most people who now use it, or are about to use it.

Though this knocking the entire suite is a step up for him. He was just knocking PS before.

The concept of using 3-4 apps to manage and print photos isn't the real question, though he likes to put it that way.

If all you want to do is take your photo's and do some quick and dirty correction, and then print them out to an Apple book. Fine. Then Aperture is for you.

If all you want to do is sort and select, then send the results to an editor to select the finals to print in a paper or weekly news mag, then that's also fine.

If you shoot a dinner, and take candids, and need to print 4 x 6 through the occasional 8 x 10 where quality isn't the end point, but just getting the photos are, then fine, Aperture is for you also.

I have no problems with any of this. I never have.

But if you need to do a commercial job. A print production job. A job that goes into a *real* book or magazine. Or catalog work. Or advertising. In other words, anything that requires a high level of quality and complexity, then you can't use Aperture.

So, no, you can't do an editorial for Vogue. And, no, you can't do a glossy coffee table book. And, no, you can't do a textbook, or a web page.

No, you can't fix serious problems with your photos, just simple basic ones.

I try to point out where Aperture's usage begins and ends, but he thinks that it can do everything. Sometimes he will post a response that admits that it can't, but later, he's back to the same rant.

Exactly, JLL.

Photographers take, adjust, and output photographs. They don't output page layouts in InDesign or Acrobat. (Or, if they do, that's above and beyond photography. They're into another business there.)

Who's talking about commercial publishing? Not Apple. Not me. Just you.

Aperture has nothing to do with commercial publishing. Wasn't meant to. And Adobe's product won't either. That's what Photoshop and InDesign and Acrobat are for.

Take the 3 photographers from Apple's Aperture web site. Heck, just take the sports photographer. His photos have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Does he design the cover of Sports Illustrated? No.

Does he need InDesign or Acrobat or Illustrator for his work? No.

He uses Aperture for the workflow for his thousands of photos, and probably uses Photoshop to do some touch-ups that he can't do in Aperture.

That's exactly the way Aperture (and presumably Adobe's new product) are designed to be used.

His works ends up in commercial publications, but he doesn't do that himself. He's a photographer. A professional photographer.

Actually, those three photographers were paid by Apple to do those ads for Apple. I doubt if they actually have used it for much other than the work they were doing while making the ads.

We were just talking about PS. You were the one who brought up the suite.

But, if you just want to talk about the photographer, that's fine.

Very few photojournalists do their own photo selection. That's almost always left to the editor. They used to send the film directly to be processed, and then it would be sent directly to editorial by us. Now, they send their work either through satellite phone, or over WiFi, or over "the wire".

We already discussed this .

If a photographer were to do a book, and many of the finest ones have done several, they would have an editor, and an art director. I've worked on a number of these books.

Two kinds of photographers here. One kind leaves the photo work to someone like me. While I haven't done advertising or fashion photo work for years, I have done, at my own lab, a great deal of work for my clients.

So, they come in, we select the photos (yes, we, clients get to know you, and do respect your opinion over time), and the client tells me what they need done, with some of my input if they aren't familliar with the process, which many are still not.

I do the work, either by myself, for some clients, or with them, for others who like to work interactively with me.

Afterwards, the photos go to the editor and art director.

The other type of photographer wants to do all of the work themselves. They come to me for scans, for film, but the rest they do.

These people do work for art. They aren't limited by what the camera has left in the file. They are creative. They manipulate. It's all very proper.

Ansel Adams manipulated all of his photos, so did most of the other great photographers of the last century. So will most of the great ones this century.

Aperture won't work for them.

So, let's go to the wedding, Bar Mitzvah, and confirmation photographers. Sorting the many photo's is an Aperture natural! But what about working with the selects afterwards? Well, table shots, if well exposed, would be fine. But the "special Effects" shots, where the photographer makes most of his print income from, can't be done in Aperture. They have to be done in PS.

Apple should buy Adobe. This is by no means my original idea but a bit of rehash of others ideas.

1. As insurance agains MS and the Office hegemony. If MS drops OS X development apple would have PS to hold over the head of MS.

2. As a subtle means of getting people to switch. Make new and great features Mac only at first.

3. Get the Creative Talent and Markets of Adobe and Macromedia.

4. Integrate features of PS into iphoto or Aperture

5. grow Apple.

Sorry, but I would disagree. I think that the better something looks, the more professional it is (for some purposes at least), not the other way around.

For example, Powerpoint has gone pretty much nowhere over the past few years because Microsoft has essentially stopped inovating with the product. The same has happened with Excel, there have been few significant changes over the past few years (talking about the PC side of the fence by the way).

The company that I work for either paid a graphic design company to do a Powerpoint template for us or had someone do it in-house (I'm not sure which), and it looks about a million times better than throwing together a presentation with a standard Powerpoint template.

I would also argue that having a "sexy" chart and a "simple" chart are not mutually exclusive.

Well, I can say to read the many books on the subject. Better looking doesn't mean "sexy". It can mean, clean, straightfoward, easy to interpret, uncluttered, etc.

One of the biggest propbems it that many people think that by getting more information on one "slide" they can have a more efficient presentation. In order to do that they need some complex - i.e. "sexy" chart.

That's wrong. Presenting LESS information per chart, and doing it well, with more charts presented as you explain the numbers, leads to more understanding.

I'm not saying that the standard templates are the nicest. But most are fairly simple, and the colors are designed not to distract from the information being presented.

The worst presentations have animated things zooming in and out so that they distract from the presentation itself.

Once might be good for a laugh, but after that, simple and straightfoward always wins.

You don't want your presentation to look more important than the information it is designed to impart.

Since the topic of integration has been brought up, I for my life would not like to have an app that integrated the functions of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Photoshop is for handling bitmap files. Its files are defined by pixels.

Illustrator is for handling vector graphic files. Its files are defined by size-independent content.

InDesign is for handling layouts. Its files are defined by size-dependent content.

???

Shareholders would have to sell their shares to Apple or MS?

Yes, and I don't understand why you'd recommend to a photojournalist that they buy LightRoom or Aperture, since those are workflow applications. And if you wouldn't recommend to a photojournalist that they buy these apps, is there any point in bringing photojournalists into the discussion anymore?


I feel like former President Reagan. "There you go again!". If LightRoom is a true Aperture competitor, then it is not aimed at people like this. Do you understand that?


Again, who said it would? Not me. Not anyone else here. LightRoom and Aperture are the workflow app, and PS is the editing app. No one is saying LightRoom or Aperture is the pixel-level editing app.



"There you go again." No one is saying these won't be done in PS.

If you're a professional graphic artist, then you're absolutely right. You'll also want a separate app (e.g., DreamWeaver) for web design.

But people (including photographers) who aren't full-time, professional graphic artists don't have the time or inclination to learn all these best-of-breed programs. And those apps have far more functionality than they'll ever touch.

That's why even Photoshop (and surely LightRoom) can print multiple images per page (the domain of InDesign) and export web pages (the domain of DreamWeaver).

And even then, the delineation between graphics editing applications blurred long ago. PS can do dynamic text and shape/line editing, which theoretically is the domain of Illustrator, and flexible paragraph formatting which is the domain of InDesign.

The issue isn't so much one of purity (i.e., separate silos of graphics editing) as it is *who* the application is aimed at. Photoshop is aimed at pixel pushers who do light text formatting and line editing. Illustrator is aimed at vector design folks who might want to incorporate the occasional bitmap in their work. InDesign is mainly text formatting, but it's got some vector tools and can apply various PS layers to embedded images. LightRoom is mainly workflow (if it's anything like Aperture), but it does do some light editing, book printing, and web page generation itself.

So, if you're too pure about what an app is supposed to do, it actually makes it harder to use for its intended audience.

And if this thread has shown anything (other than Adobe and Apple financials ), it's shown that some people don't understand where certain apps are directed. Before buying or recommending an application, you need to understand who--and what workflow--it's aimed at.

Don't recommend InDesign to someone who creates memos all day, and don't recommend Photoshop as a workflow app for photographers. Even Adobe realizes that; that's why they're coming out with LightRoom, after all.

1. MS is already creating the foundation of competing apps for Adobe. So holding PS over the head of MS isn't likely to get Apple anywhere.

2. Does Apple want to get in the business of developing Windows apps (other than QuickTime and iTunes)?

3. Apple has some pretty good people themselves. And they can just steal whoever they feel they need. Kinda like Sony just stole a semi-bigwig from Apple recently.

4. I'd rather have iPhoto or Aperture integrate with a more powerful editing app.

5. Apple can grow plenty by stealing Adobe's customers.

Yes, though it's very unlikely. There might also be issues with the Feds if MS attempted it.

You do twist things around. I never mentioned LightRoom, did I?

But, you've pretty much made my case for me. You agree that it has a VERY small audience, because it does so little.

Sorry, but I think we'll just need to disagree on this topic. I'm not referring to making complicated uber-graphs, I'm referring to attractive looking graphs that most effectively deliver a message.

Microsoft is so focused on the look and feel of their next-gen OS, yet they don't seem to be giving any consideration to the look and feel of the output that Excel and Powerpoint generates.

For the worst keynote slides see Bill Gates. He uses that horrible olive green colour and his slides are more tacky than Intel's at WWDC!

Yeah, Adobe's coming out with LightRoom to grab all of 3 customers from the total of 5 photographers worldwide who need a program like Aperture.

Yeah, there must not be a market there. Adobe's shareholders are thrilled that Adobe's competing in this "non-market".

Yeah, they match the pukey green and blue color scheme of XP--and it looks pretty similar in Vista. Yuk.

Yes, definitely. Ever compare the DVD themes in Windows programs compared to iDVD? Sure, there are a few cutesy ones in iDVD, but overall they are much simpler and yet more sophisticated than anything you'll find in a Windows app.

Sonic even used to charge extra for "special" themes for MyDVD that were truly ugly and busy and were far worse than the free themes in iDVD.

Apple is definitely a class act.

I completely agree. And doesn't apple have billions of dollars banked up? Maybe that was one of their reasons for keeping so much cash on hand, preparing a buyout of somebody? Purchasing Adobe would be like buying insurance against flopped hardware. If for some awful reason the Intel mac's flopped, apple could back off the hardware (it would suck...but hey its a backup plan), and they could sell OS X x86 and the Adobe suite, Aperature, iLife suite, etc. And maybe even negotiate bundle agreements with PC manufacturers.

If Apple were going to buy Adobe, wouldn't they have done it before spending all that time and energy creating Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Motion, SoundTrack, etc.?

Apple has no interest in creating or updating Windows programs. They've bought a number of companies over the past few years, and immediately killed the Windows versions of each of those applications.

Adobe's apps are not optimized for OS X. They're cross platform and thus a huge compromise compared to OS X-optimized apps (e.g, CoreImage, CoreAudio, etc.). Adobe's publishing apps are also very, very old. Adobe keeps adding features and trying to improve the user experience, but it's getting harder and harder to do. They really need a complete rewrite ($$).

Apple's professional apps are all based on a common framework. If you own any of them, you'll notice that you occasionally get Software Updates for the Professionals Applications. This is a framework that's updated, and then all the pro apps gain the benefits. Aperture is clearly based on this framework (take a look at Aperture and then DVD Studio Pro--look familiar?). Apple will leverage this to create new apps that may compete with Adobe's publishing apps.

Rumor has it that iLife 06 will include iWeb, a simple web publishing (and PodCasting?) application. Just as there is Final Cut Pro for iMovie, and DVD Studio pro for iDVD, and now Aperture for iPhoto... don't you think Apple is working on a professional web design app that will be the pro version of iWeb? Of course they are.

For all these reasons, there is no justification for Apple even to consider buying Adobe. Just ain't gonna happen.

Let's just hope LightRoom isn't the dog that Adobe Bridge is. The idea of Bridge is wonderful, in my experience, however, the implementation is lackluster (blows). And as far as the age of Adobe's publishing software, InDesign is really not all that old, though the first version was released for OS 9, before X was mainstream. Also, Illustrator to my understanding has recently recieved a rewrite on the Mac platform using the new development platform.

Photoshop remains a dog in many respects, and GoLive the redheaded stepchild. I'm really interested to see what Adobe does about Flash/SVG, and whether or not they will push Google/Yahoo etc into being able to index vector content.

Huh? If you want insurance against flopped hardware, how about CASH?!

Of you buy Adobe, all you're doing is putting yourself at risk of either flopped hardware OR software! Brilliant!

Public Beta now available.

http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/

Positive first impression just from watching the video. I'm mostly curious about the UI. I'll let the "pros" with more direct interest and related experience be the beta testers and critics.

Notable segment near the beginning:

"Watch as I move through these 16Mp photos. I think you'll find that the performance is pretty fantastic. And, I'm recording this movie on a common laptop configuration ... so Lightroom will run beautifully on real world hardware."

And near the end:

"... I'm going to show you some of our outrageous performance advantages over the so-called competition."

It's a pretty safe bet George is targeting Aperture when you hear the tone and emphasis in those remarks.

It's all sleight of hand. It's using cached proxies for printing multiple images on a sheet, and for the small previews. He states that in the video. It's 100% pure marketing hype when he makes the statement about "printing 16MB photos" when, seconds earlier, he said that it *doesn't* print 16MB files but rather the proxies.

Don't get me wrong. That's a great performance enhancement (after all, you don't need all 16 megapixels to print a thumbnail of 8 images per page). But don't claims that you're printing a full resolution image when you're not.

Other than that little bit of marketing hype (Apple is just as guilty of that sort of thing ), Lightroom appears very impressive. I'm no Adobe basher; it's just that their apps "for photographers" have been terrible up to this point.

Lightroom is very, very different. Very impressive, Adobe!

What's particularly funny in retrospect (with melgross insisting that Aperture/Lightroom would not be suitable for photojournalists and many other photographers) is this from the Lightroom FAQ:

Lightroom beta 1 is available for download here:

http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/

Enjoy...

Ops, seems I was late. Should have read all the posts before. Sorry.

From the Macromedia forums for Lightroom:

Lightroom is intended to be very focused on the specialized workflows of digital photographers. Bridge serves a much wider variety of customers and workflows, and by so by necessity, has more generalized features. During the development of Lightroom, we heard from a lot of photographers, that, yes.... they want to work with one program. But we also heard that you want a very focused application that is easy to learn, very lightweight, and elegant. One that is super-efficient, but at the same time, is a pleasure to work in.... and does not require taking a workshop just to get up and running with. Lightroom serves just one master, and that is the higher-volume, serious photographer. Whether pro, or advanced amateur.

The thing I'd like to emphasize is that Lightroom should ultimately become the 95% workflow solution for the daily work you do to import, manage, process and output your photos. If you want to do compositing, or deep pixel editing, that's great.... that's what Photoshop CS2 is for.

George Jardine
Pro Photography Evangelist
Adobe Systems, Inc.

It's a shame Bridge doesn't share some of the features that LightRoom does, general as it may be. Like speed and lack of suck.

Lightroom is somewhat different from Aperture, as it is designed to work much more closely with PS.
Aperture aims to be self-contained. It will export to PS an import flattened images, but that's it.

Lightbox will be more integrated.

But, time will tell with both of these. I've got Aperture, and have been using it. I haven't had the time in the couple of days it's been here to try Lightbox, but I'll do that tomorrow.

I like the fact that the beta is available. It would have been good if Apple had done that. The release might not have been so buggy.

It's funny that you say that, since as you say you haven't even tried Lightroom.

Try this:

1. Import an image into Lightroom. It can be a raw file or a layered PSD.

2. Right click the image.

3. Select "Edit in Photoshop" from the menu.

What do you get in Photoshop?

A flattened TIFF! Ha ha! The exact same thing you get with Aperture!

Nice integration. Not.

Oh, I know what you'll say. "It's just a beta." Therefore it can't be criticized because it will/might be different in the final version. In which case Lightroom is beyond reproach. Nice marketing strategy from Adobe.

I'm going to download it tomorrow. I remember you being pretty adamant about Aperture before you saw it.

We'll see about this. Adobe obviously felt that it would be good to release a beta while Aperture was so new and buggy. I hope that it will spur Apple on to fix it, pronto.

By the way, I don't own Adobe stock, while I do own Apple. So, I have no reason to push Adobe over Apple for financial gain.