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MS Unveils Beta of New Image Editing Program
docdude316 writes "CNET is running a story about Microsoft's new photo editing software, Acrylic. The new program is based on Expression, which Microsoft purchased in 2003. From the article: 'Microsoft describes the software--currently available as a 77MB free download--as bringing together pixel-based painting and vector graphics features. These capabilities will put the product squarely in the market currently dominated by software maker Adobe Systems with its pixel-focused Photoshop and vector-driven Illustrator products. Acrylic appears to support opening and exporting to Photoshop and Illustrator file formats, as well as other standard graphics formats. In addition, the application appears to be able to export to Adobe's Portable Document Format, or PDF.'
Competing with Photoshop because it does vector and raster imaging? Isn't that like saying a Skoda is competing with a Porsche because they both have wheels and an engine?
This can export to PDF? I'd have thought it more useful for them to add this feature to MS Office. Hopefully that feature will follow.
However, Microsoft noted Acrylic would not currently save pixel-type data to formats other than its native XPR file type.
Being able to save as PDF is great and all, but it looks like this thing still has a ways to go before being useful.
Lots of comments already about how MS isn't innovating. Of course they aren't. Neither was Open Office, Gimp, Firefox, etc. Not all software needs to be innovative to be successful. It just needs to be as good or better than alternatives, or fit a niche market that isn't filled already.
Since the market for graphics programs is filled already, MS needs to make this at least as good as Gimp and Photoshop for it to be successful. Since this is only a beta, only time will tell if they've done that.
Besides, I thought having choices was a good thing? Once MS starts unfairly competing in the graphics program industry, then start complaining about it. Until then, this is a good thing.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
it's still nice to finally see some real competition to Photoshop, especially considering that the price of Acrylic will be much lower than that of Photoshop.
True, if some competition brings the price of Photoshop down a few pegs then that would be nice. Still, one is left hoping that this isn't the beginnign of "Operation kill Adobe". Photoshop may be expensive but at least it is available on more platforms than just Windows.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I thought the general concensus on this board is that competition of software products is a good thing which makes *all* the products better, or am I mistaken? (At least, that's the viewpoint people give when others complain about Linux having a whole bunch of different widget libraries and thousands of text editors.)
But as usual, it sums up as "if you don't like it, don't use it." Why insult Microsoft for making it? Why not think positively and stop being so cynical for once?
Sure, maybe it can't compete with Photoshop, ok. What about Photoshop Elements? What about Corel Painter? Maybe it'll help make ALL those products better by introducing a new interface idea or unique type of filter. Who knows?
Comment of the year
Damnit, Microsoft! You're like that kid on the playground who always wanted someone else's toy, just because someone else had them. If you don't quit bullying the other kids, Microsoft, no one is going to want to play with you.
Right! Because, before PhotoShop came along, no one had ever produced a paint program before...
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So it's OK to rip other people's ideas off as long as you give them away? Interesting.
Mozilla for example is based on ideas, technology and a codebase developed by Netscape. How does Mozilla innovate?
Open source did not create IM, but they copied it to death. How does Jabber and the lot innovate?
MySQL is "ripping off" established commercial databases now, putting in innovative things like stored procedures, views and UFDs. Does MySQL innovate?
The GiMP is a Photoshop ripp-off, so much so that with every new version of PS the GiMP developers have rushed to provide their own substandard "alternatives" to some PS features. Does the GiMP innovate?
KDE has always looked like Windows. They copied the taskbar, the start menu, the tray notification area and so on. Does that mean that KDE does not innovate?
It has features and methodology that make it an innovator, but it's still just a web browser with tabs and plugins. There were other tabbed browsers before Firefox came along.
In the same way, Acrylic may have some interesting features that are innovations over what Photoshop or Gimp had, but it's still just a graphics program.
If you want to consider Firefox an innovator, then you need to consider every Microsoft product one as well, since all of them have extended the features of their predecessors in some way. I'd prefer to refer to none of them as innovators unless the program as a whole is completely unlike anything before it.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Doesn't that descripe most oss apps?
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
So would you prefer them to put a price on it
for the sake of being competitive ?
Sometimes it seems to me that even if M$ will go out tomorrow and open up windows as OSS, people here will come and complain how this is some way bad and evil.
I am not saying that M$ is jesus reborn but come on,
put some sense into it.
Some software projects are new ideas. Otheres are implemenatations designed to solve the same problem as another package, but perhaps do it differently or to reduce a high price created by an artificial monopoly. You are not correct though to paint open source as "not innovative".
Exaples of packages that owe their existance to economics:
Linux - duplicates function of Unix at lower cost.
Gimp - provides essential function of Photoshop for web designers and UI designers.
MySQL - very good database without the bill.
Examples of packages that innovate and carve out new ideas:
Gnutella and other P2P software
Sendmail, fetchmail, NNTPD, Apache, etc...
PHP, Python, Ruby (sorry if I left out your favorite)
EMACS and other editors
Inkscape and other SVG tools
Zope, Mambo and other CMS / Web application frameworks
MySQL is "ripping off" established commercial databases now, putting in innovative things like stored procedures, views and UFDs. Does MySQL innovate
Another open source product does have substantial capital in the creation of SQL... Postgress. Which leads to a simple comment: Open Source drives an incredible ammount of invention in the computer science field and in the software development tools arena - and always has.
KDE has always looked like Windows. They copied the taskbar, the start menu, the tray notification area and so on.
Incidentally, KED looks like windows if you want it too. KDE has always been spectacularly flexible in its ability to look like what the user wants. Like all desktops, KDE has borrowed the good and tried ways to do better. Other desktop/window managers have tried to be highly original like enlightment and blackbox.
Software is as software does.
-- $G
Anyone who says that has never been to SIGGRAPH. Microsoft's Graphics Research Group has some of the finest minds of CG in one place. Not sure who's there now, but at one time they had Alvy Ray Smith, Jim Blinn, Andrew Glassner, and a host of other top minds. They routinely produce as many or more papers on basic research as any commercial entity, SGI included. If I recall correctly, they hired Alvy by buying Altamira, which had a program that was doing amazing things with the alpha channel when Photoshop was pretty much useless for compositing.
As good as? This assumes that one thinks Photoshop and it's open-source clone are all that good in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, Photoshop's popularity has stalled development in the image editing field. People think that the way things are done in Photoshop are the only way things should be done. The Gimp? It's nice to have a "free Photoshop", but like too many open source projects, it doesn't actually innovate, just immitate (yeah, go ahead...mod me down...you know it's true).
I've been observing paint systems since the Quantel Paintbox and AT&T TIPS, and quite honestly, the rate of innovation in image editing and painting has been in a steady decline since the very first programs produced a flowering of innovations. It's taken new platforms like the Macintosh and the Amiga to produce change, and frankly we've not seen one of those since BeOS.
I'm happy to see MS try something new. Somebody has to.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb