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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"
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!
This is nothing new. There was an online version of GIMP available 7 years ago. It wasn't a commercial success, but with today's hardware and bandwidth prices, and with a modern AJAX interface, would it stand a chance now? Adobe obviously seem to think so.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
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 ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This means that Microsoft will follow by putting their much loved 'MS Paint' online.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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.
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Whenever people Photoshop comes up at Slashdot, people mention Gimp. But Gimp is not a substitute for Photoshop as far as professional users are concerned. Gimp is like so many OSS projects, a rat's nest of messed up code, no real road map, and half-assed implementations "features".
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Seems like it will be an interesting experiment in software as a service, but media editing seems to be a bad fit for the "software as an online service" model due to the high bandwidth & processing demands. The math has to be done either on the user's end (which would be bad for folks with low spec systems, who i see as the primary target for this business model) or on Adobe's systems (which will cost them money, decreasing their bottom line). Anyone with experience in the field have any compelling reasons why one would chose to use adobe's online photoshop rather than just using picasa or gimp?
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.
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Photoshop has a solid identity in the market, even among casual photographers. Walk into a camera shop and mention GIMP to some random person looking at the point and shoots and you'll probably get punched in the eye. That same person almost certainly recognizes what Photoshop is and does.
I'm a professional photographer but I am far less Photoshop oriented than most of my peers. But it is an indespensible tool. I've tried dozens of other apps, online and off, and even for my relatively simple needs Photoshop has no replacement. Not even other less expensive Adobe products like Elements or Lightroom. From the way the article reads this online version won't actually have the same features as a local version of Photoshop. My guess would be that it would be better named after Elements or Lightroom but neither of those have the kind of ubiquitous name recognition that Photoshop does.
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You can already do online video editing in java.
...depending on your life expectancy.
Blank until
There's a lot more than a "CMYK implementation" needed to replace Photoshop. You need suppport for ICC color correction, a lossless "base" color space (e.g. L*a*b), high-bit-depth support, monitor/scanner/device calibration support, 6+ color separation support, PANTONE color library support, and a hundred other professional-level features.
GIMP is good for making JPEGs that target the web, where color fidelity is (lamentably) disregarded. And of course personal photo editing. GIMP's true competition at this point is Photoshop Elements, Paint.NET, Paint Shop Pro, and other "prosumer" tools.