Photoshop in Danger?!!!!

It’s all market driven. Create a better graphics editor and eventually it will become the (or at least "a") standard.

Personally I think open source software is the future, and eventually someone will come along with a package that
out-Photoshops Photoshop, for free. Many of the functions within PS shouldn’t be as complicated as they are, and half the filters/actions/etc included in PS are nothing but exercises in corporate bloat.

"Al-Dabbagh" wrote in message

Hi All!

I always think of Adobe Photoshop being a great building that accommodated most of the knowledge of modern image processing concepts. This is the bright side of the notion. What if we looked at the murky side of the Photoshop’s evolving process? What if Photoshop core was built without taking into consideration the vast phenomenal resources growth? I mean what if early Photoshop authors couldn’t imagine in 80’s what the computer resources will be in the years to come? I think that the old style of programming should have some remains here and there despite the fact that Photoshop should have been re-written! Now, with all ideas added by Photoshop to the world of image processing, and all new computer resources, and the large number of qualified programmers around the world, the way is paved for new image-processing software to emerge and beat Photoshop. I wonder if friends here accept to convert to new software given that it is more powerful than Photoshop? Are we really prepared to change image processing Photoshop-oriented culture and accept to work in some competitive software other than Photoshop? Did the Adobe folks succeed in creating the Photoshop Inevitability Concept in designer’s minds? Is it really possible to create software that is more powerful than Photoshop? Is it true that accumulative experience of writing Photoshop is inevitable to write competitive software? Is it possible for Photoshop to become the only revenues generating software for a single company? In other words, would it be possible for Adobe to live only on Photoshop? Alternatively, would Photoshop continue without other Adobe’s products that support it?
Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

—
Al-Dabbagh
———————————————————— ———— Posted via http://www.forum4designers.com
———————————————————— ———— View this thread: http://www.forum4designers.com/message50363.html

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 03:49:51 -0600, Al-Dabbagh
wrote:

Hi All!

I always think of Adobe Photoshop being a great building that accommodated most of the knowledge of modern image processing concepts. This is the bright side of the notion. What if we looked at the murky side of the Photoshop’s evolving process? What if Photoshop core was built without taking into consideration the vast phenomenal resources growth? I mean what if early Photoshop authors couldn’t imagine in 80’s what the computer resources will be in the years to come? I think that the old style of programming should have some remains here and there despite the fact that Photoshop should have been re-written! Now, with all ideas added by Photoshop to the world of image processing, and all new computer resources, and the large number of qualified programmers around the world, the way is paved for new image-processing software to emerge and beat Photoshop. I wonder if friends here accept to convert to new software given that it is more powerful than Photoshop? Are we really prepared to change image processing Photoshop-oriented culture and accept to work in some competitive software other than Photoshop? Did the Adobe folks succeed in creating the Photoshop Inevitability Concept in designer’s minds? Is it really possible to create software that is more powerful than Photoshop? Is it true that accumulative experience of writing Photoshop is inevitable to write competitive software? Is it possible for Photoshop to become the only revenues generating software for a single company? In other words, would it be possible for Adobe to live only on Photoshop? Alternatively, would Photoshop continue without other Adobe’s products that support it?
Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

Many applications are (at least partially) rewritten from time to time, either when a new technology needs to be embedded that doesn’t work with the existing core, but more often for "hygienic" reasons in the program code.
Lots of crumbs and things unused for long time will then be removed, the warts resulting from patches and fixes are flattened and the program shines and runs smoothly again.

But careful programmers and their managers do not like the "hygienic"cleanups. The fear changes in existing, working code like the devil fears holy water – what if the new code introduces new bugs? What if the old code was used from elsewhere in the program in unorthodox ways?

You can see the effect of rewriting in M$ applications where this happens quite often (in the average, every third version of Word has undergone major rewrites) and the result is always one unstable generation of the program until the new bugs are fixed. It is as if you bought a V1.0 instead of the much higher version number on the box.

One competitor of Photoshop had this procedure done for its current version – and, as expected, there were a lot new problems so patches had to be written and there is still some way to go to reach the reliability of the previous version.

Now Photoshop is targeted for a clientele that is very cautious when it comes to something that will affect their productivity – and in the price range of current Adobe products, you won’t forgive as easy as in the 100$ price range.

We have seen a lot of new featues with PS7, most of them are available more consistently or more stable in PS CS now (like 16bpc support). So I suppose the next chance for a major cleanup would be rather version 10 than version 9.

Michael

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 01:51:33 -0800, "Rick" wrote:

It’s all market driven. Create a better graphics editor and eventually it will become the (or at least "a") standard.
Personally I think open source software is the future, and eventually someone will come along with a package that
out-Photoshops Photoshop, for free. Many of the functions within PS shouldn’t be as complicated as they are, and half the filters/actions/etc included in PS are nothing but exercises in corporate bloat.

Isn’t the "GIMP" on it’s way to being a Photoshop competitor?

"Al-Dabbagh" wrote in message

Hi All!

I always think of Adobe Photoshop being a great building that accommodated most of the knowledge of modern image processing concepts. This is the bright side of the notion. What if we looked at the murky side of the Photoshop’s evolving process? What if Photoshop core was built without taking into consideration the vast phenomenal resources growth? I mean what if early Photoshop authors couldn’t imagine in 80’s what the computer resources will be in the years to come? I think that the old style of programming should have some remains here and there despite the fact that Photoshop should have been re-written! Now, with all ideas added by Photoshop to the world of image processing, and all new computer resources, and the large number of qualified programmers around the world, the way is paved for new image-processing software to emerge and beat Photoshop. I wonder if friends here accept to convert to new software given that it is more powerful than Photoshop? Are we really prepared to change image processing Photoshop-oriented culture and accept to work in some competitive software other than Photoshop? Did the Adobe folks succeed in creating the Photoshop Inevitability Concept in designer’s minds? Is it really possible to create software that is more powerful than Photoshop? Is it true that accumulative experience of writing Photoshop is inevitable to write competitive software? Is it possible for Photoshop to become the only revenues generating software for a single company? In other words, would it be possible for Adobe to live only on Photoshop? Alternatively, would Photoshop continue without other Adobe’s products that support it?
Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

—
Al-Dabbagh
———————————————————— ———— Posted via http://www.forum4designers.com
———————————————————— ———— View this thread: http://www.forum4designers.com/message50363.html

**************************
Mark Herring, Pasadena, Calif.
Private e-mail: Just say no to "No".

In article , Al-Dabbagh
wrote:

[…] What if Photoshop core was
built without taking into consideration the vast phenomenal resources growth? I mean what if early Photoshop authors couldn’t imagine in 80’s what the computer resources will be in the years to come?

Before PS there was already a good body of image processing research and published algorithms, and of course machines like the Scitech existed long before the personal computer. As the personal computer moved to Cray-like performance, heavy, machine-expensive code and ideas could be made a reality.

Of course, it would have been very nice not to have to code for the gutwrenchingly ugly OSes that did make it to the marketplace. IMHO, that was a huge stumbling block in the way of making consumer software that was truly outstanding.

[…] Are we
really prepared to change image processing Photoshop-oriented culture and accept to work in some competitive software other than Photoshop?

Of course!

Did the Adobe folks succeed in creating the Photoshop Inevitability Concept in designer’s minds?

Nope. Maintaining an image requires constant effort, spending, advertising. The market is made of dummies. Advertising and promotion is like herding chickens.

Up to Version 4, PS had no real competition for those who wanted even modest imaging software. CS remains truly superior BUT the average user’s exploitation of the software remained about the same, and as PS got better, the percentage of its capabilities and features went over the head of the average purchaser. Today with CS, I’d bet the typical CS user exploits perhaps 10% of the software’s sophistication.

So now there is Elements with it’s dumbed down, pretty, push-button interface. (I’ll bet there is another prettier, dumber interface in the wings.) Elements, if promoted properly, can absorb the lower end $ market when the market realizes just how spendy and heavy CS really is.

People continue to buy CS today through upgrades. Certaily, new-customer purchases are still made by the rarified few who really do need it, but I’ll bet most people who buy CS do so only to cover their butts – they spend more than they need to and won’t use but 10% of it; they feel more comfortable following the persuasive advertising and image Adobe promotes.

Underneath CS is a body of expertise and support that will be very hard, very expensive to match. Other Adobe products probably do contribute to CSs continued development and support, if not in bottom-line metrics then in inter-application promotions by the CS division. CSs success colors other Adobe products in a very favorable manner.

It would be the typical new-computer-age horror story for some other company to come out with a CS act-alike program which had no internal staff expertise – algorithms and routines which the company truly did not understand. But leave it to some team of Harvard MBAs exported to China or India (for example) and that will happen. Software product hell.

In article , Mark Herring
wrote:

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 01:51:33 -0800, "Rick" wrote:

It’s all market driven. Create a better graphics editor and eventually it will become the (or at least "a") standard.
Personally I think open source software is the future, and eventually someone will come along with a package that
out-Photoshops Photoshop, for free. Many of the functions within PS shouldn’t be as complicated as they are, and half the filters/actions/etc included in PS are nothing but exercises in corporate bloat.

Isn’t the "GIMP" on it’s way to being a Photoshop competitor?

GIMP appeals to the freeware evangelists who get more of a kick from using the software and trading *ix tales than doing production imagemaking. That ain’t the marketplace.

Personally I think open source software is the future, and eventually someone will come along with a package that
out-Photoshops Photoshop, for free.

I find that extremely unlikely, and I’ll be absolutely astonished if it ever happens.

The GIMP is a classic example of what happens when you try to get the open-source community to create an image editor. GIMP is great for an amateur, hobbyist editor, and is probably just fine for most people who do image editing…but it is so far away from Photoshop’s capabilities, it’s ridiculous. It is not and probably will never be suitable for print professionals.

You see, Photoshop is a computer program that can not be written by a computer programmer. Writing a program like Photoshop requires more than computer programming skills; it also requires people skilled in color theory, color modelling, color separation, prepress, printing, digital signal processing, and more.

Of course, most people do not know what "color modelling" means and have no clue what "color separation" is. These people can not tell you the difference between spot color and process color, do not know what "black generation" is or what "GCR" stands for….

For these people, GIMP is great. For print professionals, GIMP is useless. Funny thing is, the people who use GIMP and the people who wrote GIMP do not understand *why* GIMP is useless for print professionals–they do not even "see" Photoshop’s capabilities that GIMP lacks. They look at both programs and see the same thing; Photoshop’s advanced capabilities are quite literally invisible to them.

They are not invisible to me, or to oter people who work in prepress. But without that background in prepress, without some minimum level of technical knowlege in common, it is almost impossible to explain where GIMP’s deficiencies lie; if you do not know what "color separation" is, it does no good to say "GIMP is not suitable for creating high-quality color separations." If you don’t know what "spot color" is,, saying "GIMP can’t creat spot-color images" is useless.

GIMP is a program written by computer programmers; as such, it lacks input from prepress professionals, press operators, and so on, with the preductable result that it lacks the capacity required for prepress operations.

It’s interesting that the open-source movement, whic has produced top-flight operating systems and absolutely top-notch server applications such as Apache, has yet to create an integrated office application that doesn’t suck. This points out one of the key weaknesses of open-source software; It produces outstanding applications with high street cred in the geek community, but the geek community does not like working on mundane, boring, nuts-and-bolts problems.

You’ll get a lot farther in the open-source community if you write a really elegant kernel mod or a highly efficient server app than you will if you write a spreadsheet app. Open-source programmers gravitate toward the sexy problems, and tend to create tools most valuable to fellow computer geeks. Productivity apps just aren’t sexy.

Image editing *is* sexy, but the prepress side of image editing is not–and very few open-source programmers are *also* prepress experts, or pressmen, or understand color profiling, or have any of the other ancillary talents that make Photoshop such an effective tool.

—
Rude T-shirts for a rude age: http://www.villaintees.com Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

"Rick" wrote in message

It’s all market driven. Create a better graphics editor and eventually it will become the (or at least "a") standard.
Personally I think open source software is the future, and eventually someone will come along with a package that
out-Photoshops Photoshop, for free. Many of the functions within PS shouldn’t be as complicated as they are, and half the filters/actions/etc included in PS are nothing but exercises in corporate bloat.

Listen up! (in my best TI voice)

How can a free application have competent, reliable, timely expert support? PS/CS is far more than a bunch of routines. There are well directed, well funded experts behind the scenes who stay in touch with the industry. Coding is far more than patching together the ideas of disparate authors then walking away.

Now I’ve watched the free exchange of software for thirty years. Unix is a good example. From an architect’s point of view, it’s a friggin mess and has been ill-considered from the start. In fact, some of it’s most horrible characteristics are so deeply engrained in the developers’ psyche that they cannot see what’s bad; they accept abysmal examples as the norm! Meanwhile, well considered OSes were established which never had the problems of Unix. Never!

Free software can only be as competent as the best ‘free’ developers, and the past thirty years is more than a ‘sample’ of the behavior of human beings in this paradigm – it’s the whole data set! So I am confident that nothing truly complex, which embraces very well leveled expertise, can be free and reliable enough for a true professsional. If I were wrong, then NASA would put their software development out there for the GIMP, Unix dweebs to cut. And they don’t.

"Xalinai" wrote in message

Many applications are (at least partially) rewritten from time to time, either when a new technology needs to be embedded that doesn’t work with the existing core, but more often for "hygienic" reasons in the program code.

You are being polite, and I appreciate it but this is not an occassion to be polite.

Programmers taking on a new assignment often have the tendency to behave as dogs in new territory – they feel compelled to piss on the code. Doing such makes them feel better because it’s about busy work and ego and easier than understanding the gestault.

Not every reliable and beautifully functional program is "properly coded" by academic or even industry standards (of which there are none, really). A great program works. Making it "better" by a newbie programmer’s standards is usually a sure route to software hell. Making it "better" by a freeware evangelist who can walk away in a huff in indignation and complete disregard for the overall picture is the _norm_. That ain’t engineering.

Personally I think open source software is the future, and

eventually someone will come along with a package that
out-Photoshops Photoshop, for free.

Outshops Photoshop for whom?
A digital photographer, hobbyist or pro? Very possible. For someone who uses Photoshop for its original purpose? Almost impossible and certainly not worth the effort.
Before there was digital photography and a flock of people using Photoshop for it, there was Photoshop for print. That is its core function and one that no one else is even trying to replace.

http://www.madmousergraphics.com
web design, print design, photography

"LauraK" wrote in message

Personally I think open source software is the future, and

eventually someone will come along with a package that
out-Photoshops Photoshop, for free.

Outshops Photoshop for whom?

For those with wooden eyes.

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 11:48:30 -0600, "jjs" wrote:

"Xalinai" wrote in message

Many applications are (at least partially) rewritten from time to time, either when a new technology needs to be embedded that doesn’t work with the existing core, but more often for "hygienic" reasons in the program code.

You are being polite, and I appreciate it but this is not an occassion to be polite.

Programmers taking on a new assignment often have the tendency to behave as dogs in new territory – they feel compelled to piss on the code. Doing such makes them feel better because it’s about busy work and ego and easier than understanding the gestault.

Not every reliable and beautifully functional program is "properly coded" by academic or even industry standards (of which there are none, really). A great program works. Making it "better" by a newbie programmer’s standards is usually a sure route to software hell. Making it "better" by a freeware evangelist who can walk away in a huff in indignation and complete disregard for the overall picture is the _norm_. That ain’t engineering.

I think we are talking about different things here. I actually do prefer re-writing code from time to time, especially after several patches. The best thing is if you have the time to let the original programmer rewrite his own code, using the old version as a "prototype".

Michael