Adobe Photoshop celebrates 25 years of image editing history

2»

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 39
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    DaVinci could've easily become the Photoshop killer we've all been waiting for. It was unbelievable back in the 90's even when compared to the latest version of Photoshop, it had unlimited undos on every file even after you've exited the program, you could turn off/on single events in your history timeline or even move them around, you can edit any entry as if it were a vector stroke, everything can be edited and changed. Too bad they only focused on vertical markets, in 1996 a DaVinci machine cost about $50K and training was $4K, my boss was like we could buy 10x Macs with everything for the price of one DaVinci. Unfortunately he was right.

    It hasn't come down much in price at $30k:

    https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/compare

    Apple had Color and Aperture and has FCPX and Motion, which could have been expanded to do more advanced photo editing but they need to be sustainable from a business point of view.

    Autodesk is moving to subscription-only in 2016:

    http://gfxspeak.com/2015/02/04/announces-subscription-transition/

    "3ds Max AutoCAD AutoCAD LT AutoCAD for Mac AutoCAD LT for Mac AutoCAD Architecture AutoCAD Electrical AutoCAD Mechanical InfraWorks Inventor Inventor Professional Inventor LT Maya Maya LT MotionBuilder Mudbox Navisworks Simulate Navisworks Manage Revit Architecture Revit MEP Revit Structure Revit LT"

    Avid has said they won't go this route exclusively:

    http://www.studiodaily.com/2014/09/avid-talks-growth-strategy-as-it-completes-financial-restatement/

    "Hernandez did take pains to emphasize that Avid has no plans to force the transition to subscription pricing. "We want to provide deployment options, both in the cloud and on premise, by license or subscription," he said. "Some in the industry have been frustrated that they've been forced to a single delivery or pricing model, like cloud or subscription, that benefits the vendor more than the actual customer and, in fact, in some cases may be more costly and less flexible. Our customers will be limited by only their own imagination and strategy, not by limits dictated by their vendor."

    Microsoft said they want to but not yet, within the next decade.

    Recurring revenue with subscription is more sustainable. A lack of recurring revenue can take any company under and has been affecting visual effects studios and gaming studios. PDI Dreamworks that originally made Shrek closed up recently:

    http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/breaking-dreamworks-animation-will-shut-down-pdidreamworks-studio-over-500-jobs-will-be-eliminated-108161.html

    They sell movies of course but it's the same principle - work to make a product, get paid once and then you have nothing to sustain the next product.

    It's why games are going the microtransaction route with addictive games or online subscription vs pay once. Apple actually started promoting pay once apps recently:

    http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/13/8032925/apple-pay-once-and-play-app-store

    Some might say that if a company stops innovating, they deserve to go under as that's the how the market operates but huge operations are nice to have around to depend on. Take companies like the Pixelmator developers, based in Lithuania with about 20 employees or so. Is that team going to be able to support the needs of the entire world's creative workers? They managed to put together a product based on open-source technology (ImageMagick from 1990, same time Photoshop 1.0 arrived), it's not all their own code. When you have software like the Adobe suites that have millions of lines of code, it needs a bigger workforce to support. Adobe has 13,500 employees, Autodesk has 7,500. Avid has 1,500.

    Smaller companies are easier to sustain with low priced perpetual licenses, large companies aren't. $1m goes a long way to support a company with just 20 employees and Pixelmator announced they'd made this in a week in 2011. Adobe makes $4b revenue per year. Buyers will choose what kind of operation they want to support - 20 guys in Lithuania making a neat standalone app from open-source software vs 13,500 people in a multinational company supporting their own multi-million line codebase. For people running creative businesses, the bigger companies will always be more dependable.

    There's an interview with the Pixelmator guys here:

    http://www.tuaw.com/2007/10/04/tuaw-interview-the-pixelmator-team/

    There was a clear need for an image editor on OS X that GIMP and Seashore weren't filling. Those were both based on similar open-source code but GIMP had to be cross-platform so the UI sucked on OS X and Seashore was just small-scale. Cross-platform support is handy in larger operations.

    If Adobe's products were cheaper then I don't think people would complain about them but they have loads of high quality, stable apps. Far more stable and reliable than most other high-end apps considering what they do. They have their share of issues but scroll through some of Pixelmator's:

    http://support.pixelmator.com/viewforum.php?f=5

    Things like not functioning at all on older GPUs from 2010 and showing glitches on 2011 models.

    I don't really get why people would like to see Adobe taken down, they've been providing reliable tools for 25 years. Flash sucks now but without it, Youtube wouldn't have happened as well as a whole range of embedded video sites. Say Adobe went away completely and none of their apps were available, there would be alternatives for pretty much all of them but it would be a far worse user experience getting them all to work properly together.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 22 of 39
    bigpicsbigpics Posts: 1,397member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by garyp View Post



    Photoshop certainly dominates professional image editing, but not because it's good software. It is an unwieldy dinosaur and hardly intuitive to learn & use. I eagerly anticipate the modern capable contenders that will dethrone Photoshop. I have used it for 16 years, but I will buy & support the first adequate replacement. And, I will Never Never rent software. Death to Adobe CC!



    "Software as a (cash) siphon..."  ...lolz...

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by manfrommars View Post

     

    I started on PS in the mid 90s, I think maybe 3.0.  It was overpriced back then (probably even more so than now).  I'm really thrilled to see small companies cropping up and making apps that are extremely competitive with Adobe's features but that cost 1/10th of the price (e.g. Pixelmator).

     

    I'm sure larger design firms  will continue to support Adobe for now, but young artists don't have to pay through the nose any more, and those same young artists will be running the larger design firms eventually.  I think that's what will ultimately kill the Adobe graphics monopoly.  It's grown too bloated and is too distant from its users.




    Looking at Pixelmator, hopeful about Affinity....

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 23 of 39
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bigpics View Post

     
     hopeful about Affinity....


    Wow!

     

    I watched the tutorials. This is fantastic. Installing now.

     

    I normally wouldn't be interested in these start up developers but since this supports all Adobe formats for import and export, it should work pretty well with my work flow.

     

    Really amazing how much control you get with very few clicks. I'll give it a try but I'm pretty much sold already.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 24 of 39
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    mstone wrote: »
    I normally wouldn't be interested in these start up developers but since this supports all Adobe formats for import and export, it should work pretty well with my work flow.

    It looks like they've been around since 1987:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif_Europe

    I'd never heard of them but they mainly made Windows software before and just started on the Mac side. They have a whole suite of apps. 230 employees based in England.

    Some of their financials are here, a lot of the data on the page is example data but the assets graph is accurate:

    http://companycheck.co.uk/company/02117968/SERIF-EUROPE-LIMITED/financial-accounts

    There's a forum here discussing the company:

    http://www.fullypixel.com/topic/1254-how-long-until-the-fat-lady-sings-for-serif/page-5
    http://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Serif-Europe-Reviews-E36023.htm

    "During 2012, Serif (Europe) Limited had a turnover of £13.8m and made a pre-tax profit of £0.93m."

    That's enough revenue to support 230 employees. Their software sells around £90:

    http://www.serif.com/webplus/

    so they must be selling over 150,000 copies of their software per year.

    It looks like the Windows side was drying up for them so they've seen an opportunity on mobile devices and Macs and given that they wrote "no subscription" on the page, I'd guess they want to appeal to buyers put off by subscriptions. The image editing software looks nice and very low price.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 25 of 39
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

     
    It looks like the Windows side was drying up for them so they've seen an opportunity on mobile devices and Macs and given that they wrote "no subscription" on the page, I'd guess they want to appeal to buyers put off by subscriptions. The image editing software looks nice and very low price.


    I played around with it for awhile and I'm very impressed. I found one or two bugs but nothing major. The is a preset for Letter but it actually measures for A4. You can change it manually and if you go to page set up afterwards it actually works correctly. The other bug is in the shadow off set settings, again very minor. 

     

    I hate say it from such limited experimentation, but it really does put Illustrator to shame. Freehand users are sure to like it as it has a lot of the same feel in the controls and even exports to FH format.

     

    Personally I don't mind about Adobe subscription because I use several titles all day long everyday to make money, but Affinity is very reasonably priced for what it does.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 26 of 39
    mstone wrote: »
    xixo wrote: »
    Quark had been the standard, but two years after the introduction of InDesign, Quark was dead in the market.
    Drop shadows, native Photoshop files, bezier containers, gradients, transparency, Quark importer, copy and paste between Illustrator and Photoshop, much better printing dialog settings, and much more. Quark was just outclassed by a huge margin. I think Adobe fully comprehends how inDesign killed Quark. 

    First Quark upstaged PageMaker and had a window of opportunity to dominate. A combination of extortionary pricing and world class poor customer service that left the door open for inDesign (or any other reasonable DTP software) to elbow Quark out of the picture. As I recall inDesign didn't start out to look like a Quark-killer, but rapid improvements along with Quark continuing to treat customers like dirt, did the trick
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 27 of 39
    mstone wrote: »
    bigpics wrote: »
     
    [CONTENTEMBED=/t/184862/adobe-photoshop-celebrates-25-years-of-image-editing-history#post_2678517 layout=inline]<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> hopeful about Affinity....</span>
    [/CONTENTEMBED]
    Wow!

    I watched the tutorials. This is fantastic. Installing now.

    I normally wouldn't be interested in these start up developers but since this supports all Adobe formats for import and export, it should work pretty well with my work flow.

    Really amazing how much control you get with very few clicks. I'll give it a try but I'm pretty much sold already.

    I was a big fan of ReadySetGo for DTP back in the day, before they stopped being promoted in the USA. They only have ONE guy working on the code for OSX and the update has been stalled for years... It was a nice compact program that did a lot for a few bucks, and was pretty snappy running on the old pre-RISC chip Mac days.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 28 of 39
    bigpics wrote: »
    garyp wrote: »
    Photoshop certainly dominates professional image editing, but not because it's good software. It is an unwieldy dinosaur and hardly intuitive to learn


    "Software as a (cash) siphon..."  ...lolz...
     
    I started on PS in the mid 90s, I think maybe 3.0.  It was overpriced back then (probably even more so than now).  I'm really thrilled to see small companies cropping up and making apps that are extremely competitive with Adobe's features but that cost 1/10th of the price (e.g. Pixelmator).

    I'm sure larger design firms  will continue to support Adobe for now, but young artists don't have to pay through the nose any more, and those same young artists will be running the larger design firms eventually.  I think that's what will ultimately kill the Adobe graphics monopoly.  It's grown too bloated and is too distant from its users.


    Looking at Pixelmator, hopeful about Affinity....

    No love being thrown Gimp's way.... :\
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 29 of 39

    Yes you are correct.  I will debate that the better way to go is Capture One or Dx0 and then use Pixelmator in your workflow.  You need to start with the very best possible RAW conversion and adjustments or everything else you do will be inferior.  Then to fix up isses, Pixelmator can take care of what Photoshop does.  At $30, Pixelmator pays off in a few months over what Adobe offers. 

     

    With that, I once again will state, better results, lower cost.  Avoid Adobe at ALL costs.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 30 of 39
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,771member
    No love being thrown Gimp's way.... :\
    Agreed. CorelDraw's included Photopaint on the other hand is pretty good and easy to navigate. A hidden gem IMO considering the cost of similar Adobe products. Worth considering for those with limited budgets.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 31 of 39
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post

     
    Agreed. CorelDraw's included Photopaint on the other hand is pretty good and easy to navigate. A hidden gem IMO considering the cost of similar Adobe products. Worth considering for those with limited budgets.


    Does that run on a Mac? I would never recommend any software that was not 100% CMYK compatible with professional DTP applications or at least could output PDF/x 1a verified documents with crops and bleed, which is why I would never use Pages to create anything. I have it and use it to read Word documents, that's it.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 32 of 39
    I started on PS in the mid 90s, I think maybe 3.0.  It was overpriced back then (probably even more so than now).  I'm really thrilled to see small companies cropping up and making apps that are extremely competitive with Adobe's features but that cost 1/10th of the price (e.g. Pixelmator).

    I'm sure larger design firms  will continue to support Adobe for now, but young artists don't have to pay through the nose any more, and those same young artists will be running the larger design firms eventually.  I think that's what will ultimately kill the Adobe graphics monopoly.  It's grown too bloated and is too distant from its users.

    I started using PS 1.x back when a Mac II was the fasted thing Apple was shipping. What a blast!! When I received the 2.0 CD it came with a floppy to kill the beta time-bomb they accidently left in the shipped CDs.

    It's hard to imagine that PS ever ran on a 680x0 machine, with 8Meg of RAM, but it once did. Now why do I think my first version of PS didn't ship under the Adobe's name?
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 33 of 39
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,771member
    mstone wrote: »
    Does that run on a Mac?
    https://corelblogs.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/you-can-run-coreldraw-on-a-mac/
    mstone wrote: »
    I would never recommend any software that was not 100% CMYK compatible with professional DTP applications or at least could output PDF/x 1a verified documents with crops and bleed, which is why I would never use Pages to create anything. I have it and use it to read Word documents, that's it.
    Yes completely CMYK compatible and offers PDF export for press-ready files. This video is for an older version, perhaps Corel10. It's much improved in the past couple of years.


    CorelDraw, particularly the more recent versions (X6 and X7) on on par with the latest Illustrator IMHO but with better yet text handing and gradients and PhotoPaint serves well at a poor-man's Photoshop CS3 level. Not up to par feature-wise with CS5/6 or later of course. They even make it easy for users of Adobe products transitioning to CorelDraw. I use both products but favor CorelDraw myself for most daily tasks.


    They also offer free trials of their products. You might try it if you you have a few spare hours to play around with it. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at the capabilities.
    http://www.coreldraw.com/us/free-trials/
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 34 of 39
    MacPromacpro Posts: 19,873member
    I would say they wrote some of the worst software on the planet. The UI design is dreadful, and often very un-mac like. Buggy as hell. But worst of all (for me personally) they killed off my two favourite apps. Fireworks and Freehand which I will never forgive them for. They effectively killed off Flash too by trying to take over the web with it. I actually used to like Flash back in the mid nineties, as I was a Flash developer for 5 or so years. Glad to see the back of that nonsense though.

    I loved Freehand and PageMaker.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 35 of 39
    MacPromacpro Posts: 19,873member
    garyp wrote: »
    Photoshop certainly dominates professional image editing, but not because it's good software. It is an unwieldy dinosaur and hardly intuitive to learn & use. I eagerly anticipate the modern capable contenders that will dethrone Photoshop. I have used it for 16 years, but I will buy & support the first adequate replacement. And, I will Never Never rent software. Death to Adobe CC!

    Apple should have such an application, after all Mac Paint and Mac Draw showed the way.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 36 of 39
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bigpics View Post

     

    Looking at Pixelmator, hopeful about Affinity....


     

    I downloaded the beta version of Affinity Photo. The one thing that really intrigued me was that it supports CMYK, something that Pixelmator lacks.

    I still need to play around with it, but it really looks interesting.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 37 of 39
    remember those render competitions Steve used to do at the Mac shows? I used to love those.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 38 of 39
    tundraboy wrote: »
    25 Years of Image Editing History and 15 Years of Screwing and Fleecing Customers.   Or words to that effect.

    I certainly don't like many of the questionable decisions Adobe has made, but no one is forced to use their software. Buy the even worse alternatives instead if Adobe has nothing of value for your needs
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 39 of 39
    25 years of software that only worked half the time.
    Congratulations Adobe on 12.5 years of working versions of Photoshop!
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.