Photoshop Online Within Six Months

scobrown writes "Adobe is going to create a software-as-a-service version of photoshop that it will initially be offering for free. It should be available within 6 months. It is supposed to be ad supported... but we'll see how long that lasts"

Comments

Platform-independent, I hope

[darien]

So long as it's not written in ActiveX or anything dumb like that, this could be good news for Linux on the desktop. Can't install the latest version of Photoshop? Who cares, just use it online!

Re:Platform-independent, I hope

[dankenstein355]

Rather use GIMP to be honest. Anyway, performance will be way too slow for any image of a reasonable size over the web. Why bother? Or am I missing something here?

Re:Platform-independent, I hope

[miyako]

I'm guessing that while performance might suck for large images, anyone doing real graphic design and photography will have a real version of Photoshop. This is probably intended for people who want to be able to quickly design some small graphics for use on their website.

Re:Platform-independent, I hope

[GIL_Dude]

Actually I think this could be very handy for people who get sent a .psd file by some "designer" who doesn't even think to send you a jpg or png that you can actually VIEW. So you open the web app, convert the file to something you can actually view and you are done. That's assuming they make it useful enough to export to other file formats.

Re:Platform-independent, I hope

[Constantine XVI]

Sun Java is in the process of going GPL, and there's also Apache Harmony, GNU Classpath, and GCJ. I wouldn't put it past Adobe to do a pure Java Photoshop. I've never known Flash to be a platform for intense serious work myself, though Adobe may know something I dont, given they own the thing

Re:Platform-independent, I hope

[clodney]

1500 pixels square? As in an image of 1500 x 1500 pixels?

Lets do the math

1500 x 1500 pixels = 2.25 million pixels
4 bytes per pixel = 9MB per layer

30 layers = 270MB of image data.

That doesn't count memory consumed by the undo system, which can quickly get very large.

Plus the amount consumed by Photoshop itself.

Plus the fact that rather than composite 30 layers on the fly whenever a window is invalidated, there is undoubtedly some amount of paint caching going on, probably the equivalent of several more layers worth of data.

The 120MB that the file consumes when stored in some compressed format on disk is just the tip of the iceberg here.

Next business opp.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Once it is offered, someone from the Third World would offer services to touch up the photos, clearing the background and adjust the color balance etc on the web using the free adobe photoshop. Already I have seen ads from people willing solve CAPTCHAs for less than a dollar an hour. Homework service for school children is also popping up. If only someone would invent a lawnmower that could be driven remotely via the net ...

Re:GIMP online 7 years ago

[grapes911]

It might not be a new idea, but you can't possibly compare the resources of Adobe with the resources of GIMP.

Anyone remember Photo Deluxe?

[Dogtanian]

Didn't take reading the article to figure out that any version of Photoshop that was both online and ad-supported was more likely to be a very cut-down service and greatly different/simplified from the boxed versions.

I used to use an app from Adobe called "Photo Deluxe". It was based on the Photoshop engine, but with the interface totally changed and cut down (more so than Elements). I wouldn't have considered that Photoshop, and I suspect that this online service will be even more simplified. Calling it Photoshop is likely just a branding exercise.

Re:GIMP online 7 years ago

[Big Nothing]

You are implying that Gimp is Photoshop, or at least that Gimp is equal to Photoshop. It is not. This _is_ a big deal.

[Trying to avoid Gimp-zealot flame: There are things that Gimp does better than Photoshop (the histogram comes to mind) and Gimp certainly is the best freeware graphics program out there, but Gimp is in general not as good as Photoshop when it comes to functions and usability]

Where is the CPU?

[bjb]

OK, so I upload my 20MB PSD file and run a gaussian blur on it. Who's CPU is doing that? Unless it is ActiveX (Win32 only) or a Java plug-in (most likely not super efficient on raw CPU features), is it going to be hosted on their servers? Javascript won't handle it very well, I'd have to think.

Probably not going to be a huge deal, but those real-time previews of CPU intensive filters are nice on the machine local installation; only hope those make it to the online as well.

Re:Where is the CPU?

[lpontiac]

This is Adobe. They'll write it in Flash. Expect an application that'll run locally in the Flash runtime (which will happily have optimised image composition routines to do stuff like a Gaussian blur), but with the web used to deliver the application inside a browser, and possibly with online storage and/or public sharing of your work tied in.

Re:GIMP online 7 years ago (who cares?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone is a little out-of-touch with what photoshop is typically used for.