Microsoft’s Photoshop assassin
Source: apcmag.com
Written By Dan Warne
Forest Key once worked for Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) doing effects for films like Star Wars, Star Trek and Mission Impossible. Now he is in charge of building Microsoft’s Photoshop-killer, Acrylic, now in public beta. APC asked him whether he is embarking on a new “Mission Impossible”.
Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop are clear winners over GoLive, LiveMotion and Fireworks. Can you really break into this market?
I don’t think I could come to work every day if I thought we couldn’t. There is room for innovation. Of course, we don’t think we will succeed in an entrenched market just because we are Microsoft. It requires understanding customers’ needs; being passionate about meeting them.
Can anyone really improve on Photoshop after 15 years of finetuning?
I think when you have a product that works and allows you to do your job, you tend to feel that’s the way the world should be. But when innovation comes around and people see there are better ways to do things, people are pretty quick to switch.
An excellent example of a product that took the world by storm when it came out in the 3D space was Maya. People were pretty happy with 3D Studio Max and so on, but when Maya came out it really pushed the industry forward. People realised it was a significantly better way to do what we were all doing before. Since then, we have seen tremendous innovation in all the 3D tools.
August 24th, 2005 at 6:23 am
If they can’t create a decent alternative for Photoshop Elements (Digital Image Suite 2006), how would they be able to create an alternative for Photoshop
August 24th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
I hope this will force Adobe to lower price on Photoshop. I’m sorry they will lose their favorite cash cow, but let’s be frank - it is terribly overpriced because until now there was no real competition.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Three points that should be made:
1. Acrylic is not a “Photoshop Assassin”. They aren’t even the same type of tools. Sure, there’s functionality overlap but they are for distinctively different purposes. Painter, Deep Paint and Photoshop all live together nicely and I’m sure Acrylic will eventually be a nice addition to the toolbox too.
2. Microsoft isn’t well regarded in the mac-heavy graphics community (even PC graphic artists like me are frustrated with Microsoft products), and from the look of the beta, I don’t think they’re ready for a run at Photoshop. The Photoshop Assissin headline smacks of astroturf.
3. Is anyone who USES (I mean REALLY uses Photoshop, not dabblers) going to stop using Photoshop any time soon? No. Adobe has been pretty good at upgrading Photoshop, has good support overall and is well regarded for nice code. Same can’t be said for Microsoft products.
August 24th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
“Well, one great feature is a nifty panoramic photo stitching feature that can automatically take a bunch of photos, stitch them together seamlessly, do colour correction between the shots and even fix distortion from the camera lens. Microsoft Research does some amazing, science fiction-like stuff with computer graphics. ”
er yeah. Microsoft Research bought a copy of RealViz Stitcher and copied it. Amazing how quickly they brainwashed this guy….
August 24th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
John Nack from Adobe has a great weblog entry about this type of story: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2005/08/the_killings_go.html
August 25th, 2005 at 4:15 am
Who is killing whom ?
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/08/adobe-says-killins-gotta-stop.html
Adobe definitely killed Freehand