Adobe Planning Hosted Online Version of Photoshop April 9, 2007
Adobe is going to take Photoshop online according to a CNET news story. Photoshop is an extremely popular photo and graphics editing tool. Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen told CNET News.com that they have watched Google go online with other types of software and that they "want to make sure that we are there before they are."
Chizen said Adobe laid the foundation for a hosted Photoshop product with Adobe Remix, a Web-based video-editing tool it offers through the PhotoBucket media-sharing site.
Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe's more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising.
"That is new (for Adobe). It's something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises," Chizen said.
Chizen described the introduction of Adobe Remix and the forthcoming hosted Photoshop as part of a larger move toward integrating hosted services into the company's product mix.
Photoshop is a very popular brand so the potential is there for Adobe to enter the market with its editing software and possibly expand into photo and video sharing as well as social networking. Drawn.ca blogs that it is "high noon for online image editing - and it's the illustrators and visual creatives who stand to benefit the most." A post on John Nack's Adobe blog notes that it isn't the "professional version of Photoshop" that will be offered online but tools targeted at consumers instead. Other discussion of the Adobe news can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
A post on Mashable lists some online photo editing software that Adobe's online Photoshop tool would compete with including PXN8, Fauxto, Picture2Life, Picnik, Preloadr and Snipshot. A Solo Technology post mentions a couple downloadable tools: Paint.NET and GIMP.
