Should Apple buy Pixelmator?
http://www.pixelmator.com/
A beautiful, 100% native (Cocoa) image manipulation tool similar to Photoshop.
Imagine if Apple bought this, put both Apple developers and the original developers together! They could really slam Photoshop in about a year or two.
I know Pixelmator is not there yet but it's getting there!
A beautiful, 100% native (Cocoa) image manipulation tool similar to Photoshop.
Imagine if Apple bought this, put both Apple developers and the original developers together! They could really slam Photoshop in about a year or two.
I know Pixelmator is not there yet but it's getting there!
Comments
Apple could equally bundle Photoshop Elements though and it would probably do more for the Apple-Adobe relationship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageMagick
So I don't think Apple would need to buy any graphics application per se. They'd rather
roll their own based off of Aperture or start with an Open Source base and build on top. I
hope Pixelmator (which I have) continues to flourish.
And Pixelmater likes to compare themselves to Photoshop, but they are lacking most of the pro features that makes Photoshop what it is: CMYK color space, color separations, clipping paths, etc... They are nice for occasional users like myself but fall flat on their face for actual professionals.
And Pixelmater likes to compare themselves to Photoshop, but they are lacking most of the pro features that makes Photoshop what it is: CMYK color space, color separations, clipping paths, etc... They are nice for occasional users like myself but fall flat on their face for actual professionals.
If you read what I wrote, I said, with both Apple developers and the two developers behind Pixelmator, it could be a real Photoshop killer.
My point is, if Adobe continues to push Apple aside and focus more on catering their development for the dark side, (no 64 bit/100 % Cocoa native app till when?) why should Apple and more importantly, Mac users, have to put up with this?
As I mentioned, Pixelmator is not there yet but if several dozen more developers had the chance to tackle this thing, Photoshop could be in trouble.
Do any of you remember Watson? I remember I was the one who came up with a thread (on this forum!) many years ago explaining how Watson was the next killer app. People embraced it and it became pretty big, then what happens? Apple come out with an updated version of Sherlock and what do you know? It mimics Watson!
I am not saying Apple should purchase Pixelmator and merge it into iPhoto, I am suggesting they come out with a Photoshop killer. For those of you who are bringing up iPhoto, cropping pictures, etc etc., Pixelmator is not part of that demographic. You guys are comparing Pixelmator to iPhoto when it should be compared to Photoshop.
Even then, Photoshop Elements has more functionality than Pixelmator. Pixelmator is more fun to actually *use*, but there you go.
Here the thing though - 90% of the people who use Photoshop only use about 10% of the functionality and could easily get away with using something like Pixelmator or Photoshop Elements. Hell, your average home user could get away with using just Preview and iPhoto for cropping and adjusting colour balance & levels.
However, for the pro users that need the extra functionality in Photoshop like CMYK, colour management, complex layer and masking effects, clipping paths, non-square pixels, text and paragraph formatting, etc, etc, etc... That group of people could not use something like Pixelmator unless it was seriously enhanced. Photoshop is an absolute monster of an app that is almost drowning in sheer functionality.
Pixelmator occupies that awkward "prosumer" space that is just somewhere above iPhoto, but it doesn't have the extreme high-end features of Photoshop.
I do think that Photoshop has been getting severely crusty around the edges ever since the move to Mac OS X, but there just isn't anything else out there that can match the full feature set of the app. Which is a shame.
The problem with the Photoshop UI is getting users to find and use all of the functionality offered. They've tried to do that with CS4 by bringing stuff like layer adjustments and the like to be more prominent, but I think it's an uphill struggle to change something that really hasn't had a radical UI overhaul since about version 5 or 6.
Should Apple buy Pixelmator?
More importantly; should Apple buy Adobe?
More importantly; should Apple buy Adobe?
With Adobe's poor reputation on staying with the times and subpar disposition towards OS X? Are you mad? That'd bring Apple's quality bar down 4 notches.
Photoshop and to a lesser extent Pixelmator are image editors used by graphic artists not photographers. They are used to create and manipulate images in many ways, moving beyond applying simple effects to the image as a whole. A photographer is not a graphic artist and has neither the inclination, time or training to fuss about in Photoshop.
So therefore, Aperture isn't really Apple's Photoshop. Pixelmator could fill the gap to some degree with the addition of many pro features but I personally would rather it stay lighter and cheaper. I think the main advantage of Pixelmator is its use of Apple's CoreImage framework, which is supported by the GPU and are generally much faster than Adobe's comparable filters. You can also download or create your own additional CoreImage filters using the Quartz Composer if you have the time and know-how. The CoreImage framework is designed by Apple as an efficient and relatively easy way to access core system and GPU tasks (hence the Core in CoreImage) for programming. Unless Photoshop reprograms all their filters into CoreImage, they're really going to struggle on the Mac when competitors like Pixelmator come along.
As far as I know, the filters aren't accelerated yet, just the canvas rotation and scrolling. Adobe have made noises about adding acceleration for image blending in the future. Maybe in CS5 perhaps?
Still, if they'd gone with Core Image, they could have had non-destructive GPU accelerated filters back in 2005!
Adobe is moving towards their own GPU acceleration code in CS4 though.
As far as I know, the filters aren't accelerated yet, just the canvas rotation and scrolling. Adobe have made noises about adding acceleration for image blending in the future. Maybe in CS5 perhaps?
Still, if they'd gone with Core Image, they could have had non-destructive GPU accelerated filters back in 2005!
They effectively killed the only major competition they had.
With Adobe's poor reputation on staying with the times and subpar disposition towards OS X? Are you mad? That'd bring Apple's quality bar down 4 notches.
Buying them could change both those things, particularly their disposition towards OS X. Buying them allows Apple to work on flash on their terms. Buying them enables Apple to take the best parts of Lightroom and the best parts of Aperture to combine them to make something remarkable. Buying them would allow Apple to make CS4 or 5 fully tailored for Mac OS X, it would be like Pixelmator 5.0
Buying them could change both those things, particularly their disposition towards OS X. Buying them allows Apple to work on flash on their terms. Buying them enables Apple to take the best parts of Lightroom and the best parts of Aperture to combine them to make something remarkable. Buying them would allow Apple to make CS4 or 5 fully tailored for Mac OS X, it would be like Pixelmator 5.0
Could, but wouldn't. Adobe's employees would still act like Adobe employees.