Slashdot Mirror
Photoshop in Linux Thanks to Disney
miladus writes "eWeek
reports that Walt Disney's feature animation unit (along with 2 other
unnamed studios) are using Adobe's Photoshop in Linux. They use the Wine emulator
to run the software and the 3 studios 'not known as team players, all
three agreed that a project that would benefit the entire open-source
community while delivering a technology they needed--was worth their cooperation'."
to run photoshop. Was this not previously possible?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Running Photoshop on VMWare has even less to do with running Photoshop in Linux that running Photoshop running on Wine.
It's still a Windows application running on an implementation of the Win32 API. Which means it's not a Linux application, it's a Windows application that runs in an emulator. So what?
My journal has hot
why would they do this ?, surely if you can afford 700$ for photoshop (plus the oodles of ram/cpu it wants), 99$ for a copy of Windows XP is small change especially since the stability benefits of running dedicated Win compiled code rather than emulating it would be outweigh the cost. seems this is more of a experiment than a serious buisness strategy.
Now if we could persuade PS to be native on linux we would be getting somewhere, until then ill stick with XP and PS on my x86 and my Mac wont be going anywhere soon
This is definately a big step in the right direction. Once major apps can run well under Linux, more users will be able to fully adopt it as a primary OS.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWPhotoshop is probably one of the things that kept Apple going in the dark times. With Photoshop working on Linux there is little reason for a lot of people to stay with windows. This won't make anyone suddenly aware of Linux, but that's because most graphic designers are smart enough to be able to weigh their options. This is why Apple has such a large market share in the design world compared to the consumer world. This probably won't be the killer app for Linux, but it's a VERY big step in the right direction.
Help I'm a rock.
You might as well have just said "Make Windows Open Source". Dude, whatever. It's not going to happen. And we don't NEED an Open Source Photoshop. We have The Gimp. It's a decent package that supports everything Photoshop does from filters to layers, as long as you don't need prepress stuff.
My journal has hot
I'm glad to see this sort of thing happening, but I am a little disappointed that Adobe didn't port its code to linux natively.
Using Wine will nodoubtedly help many companies using linux. And it will make the decision easier for many companies that want to use linux, but are worried about compatability issues.
My hope is that Win will carry us through the transition phase until software manufacturers just compile a linux version of their product.
The problem now is that companies won't switch to linux because their aren't enough programs supported on linux. But software companies won't develop linux products because there aren't enough companies using linux. It's a deadlock. But if Wine can make the first crack in the floodgates, the whole thing should crumble. If there are already a bunch of photoshop users running linux-wine, Adobe is much more likely to issue a linux port of their code. Which in turn makes it easier to go linux with your company!
And soon enough, all the software companies will compile their linux distrubutions, and then, if enough people ask for it, alter the code so it can be compiled for Windows.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
No. Disney non-supporting Open Source,
as it has always been.
Now, instead of using, and helping
improving The GIMP, "linux people"
will just run their pirated Photoshops
and be happy, as oftenly such users
do not know the difference between free
and proprietary software.
-><- no
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
See this is why most application companies DON'T want to have anything to do with Linux. The second they touch it, the community starts yelling "Open Source it", "Boycott it, it's binary only!", "They're violating the GPL!", etc. etc. :/ Some thanks... (Well that and the insanely small desktop market share)
I'm sorry, but Linux needs photoshop. That is one of those programs that some people actually earn their living using. The GIMP is nothing compared to photoshop. It may work for amateurs, but even people who use it as a major hobby could not get the same results with GIMP.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Why does it takes an EVIL company to do the right thing????
Ahh, but you're missing the point entirely. This is one of the major strengths of open-source from a corporate perspective. If there is something in an open-source package that does almost what you need, you pay a development team to add the feature in, then you "contribute" your changes back to the open source project, and they maintain it, at no cost to you. Developing software is relatively cheap when compared to maintaining it over a long period of time. So Disney was smart, and they got a feature they needed for relatively little money, and will continue to get it, and updates to it, for free.
Evil or not, they're not stupid, and it perfectly illustrates why open-source is a good investment for companies.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
The counter-intuitive UI of Gimp is enough reason to ditch it. Add the fact that the plugins from Alien Skin are sw33t and not duplicated in any satisfactory way in Gimp and you have two good reasons why you would want to use Photoshop over it.
Disney is just doing what it has always tried to do: Increase shareholder value. If they had decided that it was more cost effective to run all of their workflow on windows they would have done it. Linux is the best of the money according to them so they use it.
Yeah, but GIMP sucks to use when you compare it side-by-side with Photoshop. Sure it can do a lot of the same things, and suffices for most Unix users when there is no better alternative. It still clunks like a square-wheeled rickshaw.
It's true; I could typeset my documents with Emacs and LaTeX. That fact doesn't stop me from using Word though.
Getting popular applications like this running on Linux is the single most important thing to get Linux on the desktop.
Note that Adobe could probably release a native version of Photoshop to run on Linux fairly easily. They had a Unix version, and also of course it will run on OSX, so going native to Linux can't be that big an issue.
Everyone who wants to see Linux on the desktop should be pestering the companies of the software they use to release a Linux version. For me, the important one is Macromedia Flash, so I've been emailing Macromedia asking when they are going to port it. If you want to see Linux on the desktop, start pestering!
Heh, thanks.
;-) And I really hate those kind of idiots.
It's great to do a original USENET-style "don your radioactive fire control suit" flame.
It really releaves stress
I've been using Photoshop since the 2.5 days (pre layers -- when real men [and women] used alpha channels) on Macs. I then switched over to using pshop on the PC because, well, I couldn't afford a mac!
But then, something strange happened. I had been using Linux (Redhat) as my OS-of-choice at home and would switch to my laptop (running 2k) to do Photoshop work. Out of the desire to use my mouse, I went and sunk a few bucks and bought the crossover application (commercial version of wine) and whalla! Photoshop 6 runs on my linux box, and faster!
So, now I can use Photoshop with my mouse (instead of that annoying touch-pad). The only thing that is a little annoying is that the focus of the tool bar and the other pallets take away from the canvas, so if you click on the marquee tool, you have to "double click" on the canvas to get the focus where you need it. Not a big deal, just a "thing."
sad robot making broken music
Your days are unfortunately numbered. Adobe decided that they no longer need to support their friends with Macs, it seems likely that this attitude will continue with all their products, not just Premiere.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I'm torn by this too. You're point appears valid, Linux shouldn't become an "emulator" for Windows software.
On the other hand, if enough people start using Photoshop in Linux via wine, it might create a critical mass of users to compel Adobe to do a native version.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Speed is not an issue with my setup at all. I have installed Photoshop 7.0 with no windows dlls at all in wine's fake_windows setup. The install ran perfectly for me. Pop in the cd, mount it, and run "wine setup.exe"
:-)...
The actual execution of Photoshop has been perfect so far. I have used various builtin filters (but not all) with no problems. Saving files is quicker on Linux than it is on Windows, but then again, I have my drive hdparm'd to the max
Oh, btw, I'm running this on a PIII 500mhz w/ 128 meg of ram... not really a high end machine. Again, I have had no real performance issues with running Photoshop under Wine.
BTW, I am using wine-20030618
In general WINE is no slower than native Win32, and in many cases is actually faster! Remember WINE is Not an emulator, it is a reimplementation of the Win32 API native to Linux. The Linux guys often do a better job on the reimplementation then the origional coders =) Not sure where the slowness is for mirc, but I know that the mirc code uses almost none of the standard API calls so it's possibly something that is broken in WINE. Btw why run mirc under WINE when there are so many native IRC apps?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Give him a fresh juicy apple, and he complains that you should have instead figured out how to make the worm in the last apple tastier.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do you think there are any Linux users out there that would actually pay for Photoshop?
My guess is the number of pirated copies of a Linux-ported PS would far outweigh the number of copies actually purchased. I mean how many people, really, would say "Hmmmm... I could use the GIMP for free, but I'd rather pay hundreds of dollars for Photoshop!" And, as for corporate use- I don't think Photoshop is keeping anybody tied to Windows. If they were going to go anywhere else for their Photoshop needs, it would be a Mac, and not to Linux. Linux is way not ready for your average artist. If companies are using Photoshop on Windows, there's probably a good (or not so good) reason for it, and it certainly has nothing to do with the unavailability of Photoshop on Linux!
Maybe I'm wrong, but this is exactly the kind of thing Adobe would consider before porting it. They're in business to make money, after all...
Nothing to see here.
Also remember that disney is editing 35MM film, 24 frames per second, at ungodly resolution. They probably have this stuff running on a 4 way or 8 way workstations. Multi-head licenses for windows are STEEP. Microsoft also takes you out the ass for large-scale file storage. The cost per workstation probably includes the cost of the server divided over the number of users.
With Linux you are paying for the hardware and the photoshop license.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
If you are a graphics illustrator, you don't use The Gimp. You use Photoshop. It is the standard. I don't have a problem with that, but I use The Gimp. I don't do professional work, although The Gimp is pretty darn impressive. It is OK if they both exist, and one is free and the other makes you auction body parts on eBay. (unless you have acquired a copy by other means, which I won't address). If you really NEED Photoshop, then buy it. If you just want a great image editing program, then use Gimp. I know a lot of people have Photoshop simply because it is expensive, and they like to think they have expensive things. But The Gimp will suit 90% of the people who need to edit images.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I've been running it for awhile and it works great. There's slight window redrawing problems, but that's just fluff. The meat of the program is solid. Check out the demo version is you have any doubts. Worth the money.
No, Adobe decided that they could not compete with Final Cut Pro and said so in a press release that had so much spin that people interpreted it to say that they were getting out of the Macintosh space.
.one in which everyone on the mac side was holding out of Photoshop 7.
Why would Adobe even consider getting out of the market that they earn most of their money in? For the first time ever their sales between Win and Mac were even last year... a year in which NO major version of any Mac software came out..
I have not taken many business courses, but abandoning half your revenue does not seem like a course of action they are likely to take.
Although Brooks considered and even tried to use several open-source alternatives, including GIMP, or GNU Image Manipulation Program (see related story), and Cinepaint (formerly FilmGimp), he said he ran into performance issues with the two programs. Artists also found the open-source programs less intuitive to use than Photoshop.
On the whole I still believe that this is a major win for the Open Source community, and for the Linux and Wine projects in particular, but the above text did leave me pondering. It looks like Linux is getting fairly established as a stable OS, and also as a viable alternative to Microsoft's OSs', but until we have viable replacements to programs in the user space, a part of any Linux adoption policy will always be hostage to Microsoft and its tactics.All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
Just this:- I think this should be credible enough for Adobe to look at a Linux version of Photoshop. After all, two of its large corporate customers, DreamWorks and Disney, are already using it.
More than mere navel gazing.
Maybe the standardization of remote mount points, remote administration, etc which are native to lin/unix that everyone else is seeing are also benifiting Disney? I know that just about every survey I have seen puts the number of machines per unix admin at several times that of the average windows admin. This bears out in my own experience, I'm an MCSE and a RHCE and the amount of time spent per machine to support linux has been much lower overall. I still don't see why their costs are that high though, for instance I supported ~500 pc's at my last gig, about half servers and half workstations, the only machines that would have aproached those costs were CAD stations running ultra expensive specialized stuff like PCB autorouters and chip design software, support cost would be my salary+benifits/number of pc's + a little bit of the time of the remote admin team that helped me with the servers.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yes, we do. We run it within our Linux rendering farm on approx. 16 PowerPC workstations. All off them of RedHat 7.12.
I find this hard to believe. Bochs emulates x86 via an interpreter. It makes no sense to run emulated/interpreted x86 code on PPC for a renderfarm. Nice try, troll.
It means the emulator is getting better and better, so theres a good chance that more and more apps will work with it, which decreases MS's competitive advantage.
And buying a copy of Windows and running it under Linux does what to MS's competitive advantage?
I personally think vmware and wine screw Linux, how are we ever going to get native apps when its OK just to go out and buy windows and run it under Linux?
Think about it. You are running native x86 code, you're just using WINE to provide the API's. Of course, there is more latency (theoretically) by using WINE to provide an abstraction layer above GNU/Linux, and there may be inefficiencies due to the differing models that each OS uses. However, all the filters and stuff is basically algorithm and I/O AFAIK (which isn't much), and the algorithm is still native, and the I/O is good enough, it shouldn't be bad.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
you meant "buy windows apps and run it under linux" right?
Just incase you did mean what you said - wine doesn't need a copy of windows installed.
Comprehensive kitchen-sink solutions like Photoshop will be hard to replace. With 10+ years of development history behind it, and an all-encompassing feature set that makes it useful to everyone from professional photographers to astronomers, Photoshop has created a legacy that's hard to displace.
When an app gets sufficiently complex, learning to use the app effectively is like learning another language. Knowledge of all the app's functions, their associated menu items, options UI and keyboard shortcuts -- all of this know-how becomes background knowledge after using the product for awhile, and requires no thought to apply.
Eventually a good Photoshop (or Word, or 3DS MAX) user gets to the point where he conceives of what he wants to do to the image, and his fingers and eyes just do it, without him thinking much about the task. This is what we mean when we talk about productivity.
The GIMP is every bit as powerful as Photoshop, lacking only some of PS's filters and its more advanced image manipulation features. The Gimp even uses some PS-like constructs, such as layers. Nonetheless, The GIMP doesn't speak precisely the same "language" as Photoshop; thus, people will always complain about how much less intuitive The GIMP is.
In the long run, the best solution to this problem is probably to develop an even more effective UI "language" for The GIMP, and target new users who have no previous experience with Photoshop. In this way, The GIMP could build a solid user base.
...no matter how well it's written.
I've used both and I can attest to the fact that GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop. The differences between the two have to do with how well you know the apps AND most importantly how much talent you have.
The only people who think that Photoshop is better than GIMP are people with very little original creativity. They rely solely on filters and have no idea how to truly create a work of art using *ANY* tool. These are the same people who call themselves graphic designers and web designers but put up garish images that they didn't create with their own hands. They used filters and pulled source images from royalty free libraries. This is what's wrong with the world today: crafts are being mistaken for art.
Give a true artist a #2 pencil and some paper and they will give you a valuable work of art. Give a hack a fine set of brushes, oil paints and a canvas, and they will give you crap.
That would make GIMP the fine set of brushes, oil paints and canvas. And people like you, hacks.
Un-news
"While animation studios compete fiercely for ticket sales and are not known as team players, all three agreed that a project that would benefit the entire open-source community--while delivering a technology they needed--was worth their cooperation"
And isn't that what open source is all about? An itch to scratch that turns into something useful?
Vip
Whethever it's running under VMWare or WINE, whether it requires a purchased copy of Windows or not, it's still considered "OK" to run a Windows-native program under WINE, rather than develop specifically for linux. A little hack or workaround is not as enticing as a native port, and really does little for Linux.
Wine IS a Win32 subsystem emulator. It is not a x86 emulator that you must purchase Windows to run on top of it.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
An application doesn't bestow one with talent no matter how well it's written.
But it can be a tool that makes a talented person's life a hell of a lot easier.
A talented carpernter may be able to build a house with a Bowie knife and 20 acres of forest, but its not exactly the quickest and easiest way of doing it, especially if there are commercial demands and deadlines to meet. Sure, you're pure "artist" could render Finding Nemo with a #2 pencil, but how long would it take him.
Personally, for the amount of PSing I do (bad Fark contests) the gimp and PS (or PS Elements) is a wash (mainly because I suck eggs). BUT... from the folks who do some sort of graphic design for a living almost all of them swear by PS, and quite a few of them have dicked around with the GIMP as well. To a (wo)man they all say it just isn't as good of a tool to get the type of work done in a timely manner.
Does Gimp support CMYK, like Photoshop? Do you know it is REALLY important if you are doing graphics for a living?
This is, undoubtedly, a UI-design chosen by a propellerhead as opposed to someone designing a UI for the masses.
Obviously if a number of people on slashdot can't figure it out, then maybe it should not be the sole method of getting something done.
That's fine as a shortcut. That sucks as interface as your primary interface. Why? Because it violates two principles of UI: Space and visibility.
All primary tools should be readily visible, and should be in a specific locale of space where the user can reliably remember where they are and locate them again in the future.
This is one of the biggest problems with Linux GUIs. The people who code them think a pretty icon makes a good GUI. They don't have a clue about usability, because 90% of them secretly despise the GUI as a dumbing down of the computer.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
That's not the issue here. The issue here is that the Gimp GUI is so braindamaged that it is almost like the authors deliberately designed it to hinder whatever it is you want to do with the program.
Please, please, please tell me this. WHY THE FUCK does Gimp have all of its image processing functions in a goddamn right-mousebutton pop-up menu that hides the image you're trying to process in the first place? Jesus Christ! You couldn't make a worse design even if you tried.
And it has not been fixed just because of the attitude you show here. "Oh yeah? Our system is counterintuitive? Well, boy. There's only one thing I can tell you: just take your time learning our GUI because there is no way in hell that we would stoop as low as using the same GUI the people are familiar in the first place."
BOO! TERRO
It also means large visible customers for some large visible apps are using WINE, so if the next version of that app fails to work under WINE there will be some pressure on the app vender to make it work (as well as the ever present pressure on the WINE project).
If that becomes common enough it will create a large disincentive to use any secret APIs MS may choose to share with a select few vendors because the venders will learn that using those APIs will upset a bunch of their customers and make getting those customers to upgrade (and pay them!) will be harder. That is very very good.
It may well pave the way for WINE to be one of the common test lab setups for Windows software venders. Maybe they may someday even start to list "Red Hat FOO WINE version BAR" as a "supported operations system". That would be good. Not as good as a non-Windows API version of the software though.
It will also create as (not as large) disincentive for venders to use new (documented) APIs that they aren't sure if WINE has implemented. That reduces MS's ability to evolve windows, and while that may make it easier for Linux (and other OSes) to "beat" Windows, it does so in a way that reduces the end user benefit. That's not so good.
Don't get me wrong, I use The Gimp almost exclusively for my photo-editing needs. (Although in some simple situations xv or the pbmplus utilities suffice). But it does lack a few very important things (IMHO) that Photoshop provides.
On a related note, I'm still kind of surprised that Adobe wouldn't port Photoshop over to Linux even for a company with as much clout as Disney. Seriously, I realize it's a LOT of work to port an app that massive, but if basically every animator who runs linux wants it, why not? Catering to your customers is definitely part of a good business model.
Catering to your paying customers is a good model. The majority of the people who are interested in paying for Photoshop are probably not going to be using Linux. Sure there are people who want to use Photoshop on linux, but not enough willing to pay the 600 bucks per copy for them to recoup the development costs. And while it is not a fair bias, the Linux community is often seen as people not willing to pay for software. When presented with this, why would adobe ever release Photoshop for Linux.
Ultimatly, this news totally benefits Adobe. Now they know that they DON'T have to develop for Linux because it works well under Wine. They can just sit back and reap the profits from selling Photoshop to Linux people. And the best part is, they don't have to support the software.
"Hello, I'm having problems with Photoshop"
"What operating system are you using?"
"Linux under..."
"I'm sorry, we don't support Linux. Have a nice day.
click
It's ingenious really.
Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
Adobe Exec 1: Lessee. I'm hearing an awful lot about Lunix. Maybe we should port Photoshop to it. Is it worth it?
Adobe Exec 2: Well, boss according to these stats, Lunix users only account for 1% of the total desktop users.
Adobe Exec 1: 1% eh? And how many of those people are professional graphic artists?
Adobe Exec 2: 3 or 4 chief.
That would make GIMP the fine set of brushes, oil paints and canvas. And people like you, hacks.
What a pompous load of shit. This is like arguing that artists who buy ready-made oil paints are just hacks and real artists gather minerals in the field and grind their own pigments by hand.
Yes, you can do in GIMP most of what you can do in Photoshop, but the simple fact of the matter is that you can do it more quickly and easily in Photoshop. If you're a prima donna fine artist (or fancy yourself one, which sounds like the case here), then you can afford to screw around with whatever tool floats your boat. If you are a commercial artist, you are generally producing "art" to satisfy the specifications and budget constraints imposed by a client who doesn't give a rat's ass what tool you use as long as the end product is on time and under budget.
Which is why commercial artists tend to have mortgages and car payments and fine artists tend to have attitude problems.
The GIMP is on a par with Photoshop 3 or 4. Those who say otherwise need to become more familiar with the current Photoshop featureset. This is all painfully familiar of the whining I used to hear from TeX users about how Word didn't do such-and-such that TeX did, when in actual fact Word did have the feature in question.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Adobe != Microsoft.
Getting more apps to run on Linux (even if through Wine) gives a path to follow to wean a company away from Windows slowly instead of the daunting all-at-once switch that they aren't willing to go for. It's much like the inverse of installing Unix Services for Windows. The purpose of that isn't to help unix - it's give companies using unix a path to leave it slowly.
If Windows as a platform is no longer needed because it's apps can run elsewhere, then companies can start using linux for everything, and THEN native ports become economically feasable after the install base is there.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Because it already has a Windows render farm capability
"I already have a CPU in here, why would I need another one?"
I guess you've never edited a 200dpi poster
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I know it's been said already a great deal, but I want to state it clearly: among other things, I'm a graphic designer and use Photoshop all friggin' day. I run a Linux webserver for my web sites and have a couple Linux boxes around the house and in my office for file sharing, server testing, etc and the single biggest reason I haven't given up Windows on my desktop is precisely because I need Photoshop all friggin' day. However, this put the final nails in the Windows coffin.
Nobody I know who does serious graphic design takes the GIMP seriously. I believe this has to do with the GIMP's awful interface, limited (with respect to Photoshop) feature set, Photoshop's name recognition, and the widespread support for Photoshop.
Graphic designers who do it for the love, from my experience, tend to be like me in that in that they are open minded about the OS they use and share the values of the open source and free software movement to a significant extent precisely because of the creative and moral nature of good graphic design--beauty and social importance are values with a premium for many graphic designers. And, as everybody knows, supporting Microsoft with our money may actually have negative social consequences for the 99% of our society that brushes up to information technology every now and then. Because of this many good graphic designers could be persuaded to make the move to Linux.
Here's the final point, and it's really the kicker: the Mac gained and retained a lot of prestige precisely because it was the graphics platform of choice for so long and a great deal of that had to do with Photoshop. Even though graphic design users make up a small part of the population of software users relative to people who word-process and write email, almost anyone familiar with technology used to know that the Macintosh was a) expensive and b) capable of and almost exclusively used by professionals to create beautiful graphics. This helped keep Apple's reputation going even when things were going to hell in a handbasket for everything Apple-related. For whatever reason, use for professional graphics carries prestige that use for professional servers doesn't even though both are critical uses of technology. Now, what if almost everyone who monkies around on a computer heard about this Linux thing and heard that Linux was a) cheap, b) getting much easier to use and c) capable of and used by a large number of professionals to create beautiful graphics?
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground