Following rumours of the beginning of this year that Adobe shall release free light on-line Photoshop there are first sneak-peek snaps:
http://media24a.libsyn.com/podcasts/2b1900fdf84d9ecc746815cb33266039/46ea4bd5/cspodcast/PSW07VegasJohnnyLKeynote.mp4
This new Photoshop version was promised for autumn 2007.
Yeah, this is the future of common apps. This is one of the forerunners of subscription based computing. It’s been known for years that all the big players were simply waiting for the super-majority of homes in the rich nations to become high-speed enabled.
Some people were speculating that Adobe was starting to open source things because they won’t be able to compete for long on the closed source market. But in actuality they, like Google, MS, Sun, Yahoo, etc, are trying to get vendor lock in for network enabled computing. This is going to represent a very painful shift for a lot of people, particularly in poor countries (which is most of them).
The first screenshot looks nothing like Photoshop. It looks like some cut down version for touching up photos. Has it got layers, has it got masks?
Anybody using or buying Photoshop these days would be on CS3 right? You can get a full CS suite for the same cost as Photoshop alone. Does anyone buy photoshop on it’s own these days?
Is this online lock in going to let me edit a 500mb A1 multi layered PSD file over even a fast internet connection?
Looks like light weight stuff and no threat.
What the network enabled apps are going to do is download the GUI and logical elements onto your local machine, and then it will let you run it there. It may seem like it’s going to be too slow to do this, but here in America, the average home connection is expected to be a dedicated 10Mbps in the very near future.
It is a cut down version for touching up photos. The idea is to get millions of people who would never buy Photoshop (because it’s too pricy and too technically intimidating) to subscribe for a couple of bucks a month to a “photo retouching” on-line service. Now it’s free. Sooner or later Adobe will introduce some kind of enhancement that some people who’ve gotten used to the free service will pay money for. Basically, they are trying to turn Photoshop from a product into a utility. Instead of pay once, as for a product, it will be pay forever, as for power and water.
That’s a perfect analogy. The “big players” see the future as a cable TV like subscription service. All they need is bandwidth.
One of the crazier things about this is the fight for storage going on behind the scenes. Google and Microsoft are outspoken advocates of having all storage offsite in data centers. Of course they want to data-mine everything you have for targeted advertising. Google’s already doing a pretty powerful job at it right now.
Sun Microsystems has argued all along that the end user should be able to control their own storage. Funny position for a company who’s leader, Scott McNealy, said in an internal meeting (My friend was there. He was a Sun employee), that “You have no privacy. Get over it”. Of course it’s a true statement, but it’s creepy all the same.
SO what does this all point to, Use FOSS people. Free and Open Source Software will save you’re life in these kind of circumstances. GIMP is the answer boys and girls.
The only advantage for the so called ‘Big players’, is that, people are used to their software. Take MS windows for an example. Most of the people use windows not because they like it, but because there are used to it. And for the most part they don’t know that other alternatives are possible like Linux distributions.
I totally agree with Flanker. MS Windows is these days used not because Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) is so complicated and different but because people are used to it. Light free version of big players are rather their reaction of growing potential of open source possibilities.
For example Photoshop in matter is not really better than GIMP (at least
upcoming 2.4). Regarding UI standard there is actually Gimpphoto that mimics Photoshop philosophy - http://www.gimphoto.com/
GIMP is not even equal to old versions of Photoshop, and there’s no reason to think it ever will be. If all you do is buttons for web pages, you might think they’re compareable, but if you get deep into the packages GIMP’s UI becomes a major hindrance. Speed is life. GIMP is slow. Show me one UI or plugin that will get all of GIMP’s palettes to run in a single window, like Photoshop.
I’ve used PS and Gimp. Gimp isn’t even close to being in the same league with PS. Gimps help files aren’t searchable either and I can’t live with that. PS is pretty freakin intuitive and easy to work with. I can’t say the same for Gimp.
I work professionally with PS since many years(since 2.0 version, 1995 ). I have also worked with Gimp, during some time, in other jobs. Imho is not on pair with PS. It’s an amazing, wonderful tool, yes, but…PS is simply a king in its category like rarely you find other tool like it, is rare to see such a clear dominant in software in general. Is not as much of a difference as between Firefox(really superior) and IE, but definitelly PS has more power, and allow more speed.
The old thing of “it’s because windows users have bad habits”, is , imho, not the good aproach to beat it. As if so, they’ll continue like that. I’m a game artist/corporate designer. All of my mates laugh at me because I use such “hard things” as Blender, Wings, or Gimp (yup). I have a very recent curious morning when I found a mate laughing at me for using Thunderbird and Firefox, instead of IE and (eek) Outlook… (it was some sort of CEO/marketting guy…)
You wont convince so large armies of (extremely, crazily skilled) graphic artists with saying they’re just not cool, not freak enough, or not open source lovers…Instead, if you put in front of their noses something with an UI not so different to their workflows (or with a possible optional config to approach theirs(ie: similar viewport rotation)) , and that even, allows em to make work faster (in a game/design company time is… all ) …they’ll switch. Slowly but firmly.The other way, the mass will keep dominant there…And not eager to get into the other world…
I know by experience it works so. I convinced em with using Wings(forcing em -with risk of my job- to see how fast could be wings in modeling), lately am trying to do with Blender, but while I convinced some artists at jobs to use Wings, haven’t yet been able to make em use Blender or Gimp.
Windows is windows, I know, but really know well (rarely known if not in a job under hi pressure, tho… ) all what tools like Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop cs 3, or Max 9, can actually do, before thinking they’re easy to beat…
my 2 cents…
http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=3908
This plug-in does precisely that and Gimps interface isn’t slow at all if you take a few seconds to simply change some of the hotkeys and organize the palettes to your preference Gimp works fast. I was using Photoshop for years before I heard of Gimp and I’ve hardly had any problems using Gimp especially not 2.4
The biggest complaint I personally have about Gimp’s UI is the lack of context sensitive menus… any modern app should have them, it speeds workflow along nicely. Gimp by default has 3 or 4 ways of accessing the exact same menu… that’s not convenience that’s just plain bad UI design.
They’ve addressed the whole multiple window issue well enough IMO. The biggest problem with the multiple window UI that I see is having your primary menu on the tools palette window. With the way Gimp is designed it makes the most sense but from a usability point of view it seems a little misplaced.
Now, as far as online editing and stuff… Aviary is the one I’m keeping my eye on. I just don’t have much faith in Adobe anymore.
Lol, photoshop has been free and online for years, not that its suppost to be!
Come on, you all knew it.
I found that gimp it is slow on my pc when i wanna draw an image of A4 size i get some lag thing and same with the brush being bigger.
I can play Unreal Tournament at full quality and maxim resolution and i can`t edit an freaking 2d image in gimp ?