[Light]

One last point about the "paranoid" view. How many times have you personally heard of a company not releasing a game, application, or other commercial product becaue it might intefere with the marketing plans? Or, of a project being cancelled, delayed etc.. features being dropped..

You hear about this stuff all the time -- and its not paranoid -- its logical for the companies to make the most money they can -- thats what they are for.

If you doubt the sincerity of the software developers then you may find small paralelle in the way the magazine and book industries work where books and magazines are destroyed on a daily basis due to monetary considerations. (magazines and books are suppose to be stripped of their covers and these covers sent back in.. the remaining are to be destroyed.. business gets the credit).

And people wonder why some so many people and organizations are not able to afford the books, magazines, and other materials they need.

The reason is greed.

[travis travis]

Photoshop is an elegant piece of shit. As far as it goes for artists... I mean it is still pretty much it's expensive photo retouching software for get this - photo shops. It has done almost nothing ever to really cater to an artistic use of the software. That's why it's so friggin sad that it is the standard, and that people try to compete by making clones of it. Why? How many people actually need photo manipulation capabilites? I never got why there is so little interest in a pure art type program, and you don't really see any outside of Painter.

[Awetopsy]

travis travis: hear hear! And it never really was all that good a manipulating photos either. (stretching, goofing around with etc)

[bearsclover]

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Originally posted by Light:
Regarding "high-end" users.. well I would consider myself one of those considering I can code in 5-10 languages and have used "high-end" 3d apps too.

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That's very impressive, but that's not what I meant by "high end". I meant people working in professional studios and in a professional setting - for print, web, etc. I am no way a "high end" user myself, I admit it. But it has nothing to do with the 3-D apps I do or do not use, or the other languages I can code.

But I am an artist, and I have had a great time creating some artwork with Photoshop. I've enjoyed it very much. And there are far more capable Photoshop artists, who have had wonderful success with Photoshop. If they hated using it, I'm sure they'd find an alternative. There would be revolt in the streets!

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Btw, If you *really* want to defend photoshop development record then make a big circle with your wacom tablet in any version prior to 7 (which maybe in this one too).

Oh, I'm sure Photoshop has flaws, and I'm sure it could be better. But your original premise was that (I gathered) that it is OK to not pay for Photoshop because it is so screwed up. Which is nonsense. If you don't like it, don't use it. And if you are such a whiz at creating such programs yourself, DO IT. Stop bellyaching about how fabulous you could be. Since you are such a genius, and all. Talk is cheap.

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Also, look at the new options in 7 compared to previous versions.. The crap should have been released as a free patch.

No - I think there was a little more than that added. Maybe the upgrade could have been $100 instead of $150, though.

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But like I said that part of the problem is Windows which is keeping smaller developers out of the loop due...

Why do I care about that? I use a Mac! A lot of Photoshop users use a Mac. Not that I'm saying it's any easier for Mac developers, mind.

[Light]

Bear: I never said it was not ok to pay for photoshop. My argument was never about ethics -- only perfection and direction of the software development industry.

Regarding the Mac version.. I don't know the development history but sometimes I wonder if this is yet another reason we get substandard software -- as the companies cater to a very generic implementation and only optimize for the specific implementations (just speculating).

The fact that artist can do great work with photoshop is not stating much about the perfection of the software as some artist somewhere have been able to do "great art" with any tool, technique, or process.

This is testament to their abilities but not a qualification of their method.

Last, "artist would flock to some other program" and "not stand for it" is not a very well made argument considering the popularity that painter achieved given poor marketing, tons of bugs (highly unstable implementation), and widely regarded poor interface features.

However, I will conceede that Photoshop is the premiere photo manipulation and general paint program for the PC. But, given the competition (mostly 8-bit looking programs) I'm sure not how much this is stating.

Lastly, the problems with Photoshop have been recognized and this is why that many of the other paint programs do exist. Even though, unfortunately, they didn't take the best of photoshop and add too it. Even those plug-ins that held great promise acted more as seperate programs interupting the work proces and therefore decreasing potential productivity.

I will, also, admit that Photoshop can probably do a lot more then I do with it. I'm sure if got into it deep enough with actions, short cut keys, and used it for all it was worth then I could get a lot more out of it. Yet, this still doesnt say much about how well it is designed.

And, my primary concern was not ethics but perfection (perphaps the "greedy" argument wasn't the best given my purposes).

I feel that photoshop is not optimized for the tablet or the mouse. I feel that the recent addition (a file browser and a brush engine that should have been implemented long ago -- and could have been implemented far better) is a fairly weak upgrade. And, this leads me to believe that there will be more upgrades in the future (or they just dont care about digital painters and have decided to focus on non-artist doing commercial art/web work).

But yes Photoshop is a great program -- but it is time to recognize that there are better possibilities. We may even find that the tried and trued "wacom" pen tablet system could even be improved with force-feedback and other really cool things.

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Pixel Soilder: I can code in C, C++, Java, 65xx, x86, z80a, Basic, and some scripting languages. Not a programmer though really -- more of a designer without being currently employed.

[pixelsoldier]

Light: what languages can you code? And.. where are you employed?