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Photoshop’s journey to the web

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Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#121

Post by modeless »

emsy wrote: post #114
modeless wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe strong-armed everyone to the subscription model long before they supported web. There's no relation at all.

You can still get pirated versions of CC everywhere. Adobe didn’t act like they had the benefit of their users in mind in recent years, so there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

If your reason for not wanting web is "I can't pirate it anymore", I don't have a lot of sympathy for you. And it's probably not even true. With a web app like this which is mostly client side, it will probably become possible to rip it and host it on non-Adobe servers or package it up with a local web server. Especially if they offer an offline mode. I imagine pirate groups are already starting to think about building tools for this.

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#122

Post by Ralo »

Z_I_F_F wrote: post #56
Ralo wrote: post #26

I would love to see Photoshop in browser as a self-hostable option. I have many tools setup on my LAN and slowly been porting applications over to my local server so I can access all my applications on all my devices.

What others tools do you have setup on your LAN? Curious of the possibilities with this

Nothing too crazy but makes my work flow easy to swap between locations. I got VSCode server, PHPMyAdmin, Transmission (Web based torrent client), DIY Youtube downloader client, DIY video editor, A bunch of service managers, and a couple more things.

It's basically a whole developer suite with remote processing. I could do AI training on my cellphone with this setup if I wanted.

I've been working on a DIY spotify clone for a media player.

It makes it really convenient having all my files on a central server, so I'm not juggling drives, and copying over data.

As well, it's automatically backed up weekly so it's always safe.

Works well for someone always on the go :)

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#123

Post by goatlover »

cromwellian wrote: post #103
JohnWhigham wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is something to worry about. It's wresting control away from users via their no longer able to run native applications. And it's only going to continue with the continuing new generation of programmers who know nothing but JavaScript continue to implement everything in JavaScript because they've never known a world that doesn't have JavaScript.

Native applications already have subscription models so I don’t get this. And are mobile apps running in locked down OSes truly “native” either? Whether they’re written in WASM or Swift, if they are locked behind an App Store subscription, whether they’re downloaded and stored on the device filesystem permanently or downloaded on the fly and cached as needed is irrelevant as the end user still lacks control and you s…

> We once celebrated the Web and the idea of ephemerality, portability, “view source” and inspect,

Back when the web was mostly traditional websites and documents, not apps.

> And are mobile apps running in locked down OSes truly “native” either? Whether they’re written in WASM or Swift, if they are locked behind an App Store subscription, whether they’re downloaded and stored on the device filesystem permanently or downloaded on the fly and cached as needed is irrelevant as the end user still lacks control and you still end up with an uncrackable walled garden.

They're native if they're running on a native runtime, which is optimized for the device and has full access, instead of the more limited browser.

> Likewise, why is a world where most people learn JavaScript any better or worse than a world where most people learn Swift?

It's better if one language doesn't completely dominate the application space. Same issue when Java was all the hotness, and people thought everything was going to run on the JVM.

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#124

Post by bjano »

pier25 wrote: post #19

I can see Illustrator and Photoshop running on a browser but I doubt we'll see After Effects and Premiere on WASM any time soon. IMO the solution will probably be a combination of browser based UI and cloud based processing. The drawback of this approach is that the server would need to host the project files.

WebCodecs is available since the latest Chrome, so it is now possible to use hardware accelerated codecs from the browser. Instead of uploading & downloading GBs of data and paying for someone else's processing power, you can do everything locally as long as you don't mind a few limitations.

I am working on a project using this approach: https://vidmix.app

(still plenty of minor bugs, I was planning for a proper Show HN soon)

Also because both the preview and the rendering is done with WebGL the result is guaranteed to match what you see while editing, unlike with some cloud-based editors where a different stack on the rendering backend is trying to replicate what the browser is doing with js+css

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#125

Post by zz865 »

mhoad wrote: post #86
zz865 wrote: post #51

As someone who is bad at JS I really hoped webassembly would let me leapfrog JS/React etc. Is it time to start using it?

There are a few things already here or “coming soon” that will 100% let you leapfrog JS. WASM still has no concept of garbage collection which means that by default it’s limited to a smallish number of languages that are viable. That’s changing in the not too distant future it seems as the plans for garbage collection are well underway already. It also has no ability to do DOM manipulation meaning you end up in a sce…

Thanks I wasn't sure why wasm was mostly limited to C++/Rust right now but the memory makes sense.

Flutter is great except for Dart - another language.

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#127

Post by azakai »

chaz6 wrote: post #13

Only Chromium/Blink browsers are supported, so no Firefox or Safari. This is bad for the web.

That's not ideal, of course - the point of the Web is that you can visit a website from anywhere - but in practice, when this type of cutting-edge application arrives on the Web, often at least initially it doesn't run optimally in all browsers or has other limitations. That's been the case with things like Mozilla porting Unreal Engine to the Web back in the day, for example.

In general, after the initial launch things tend to improve as both browsers and applications focus on compatibility.

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#128

Post by cromwellian »

goatlover wrote: post #123
cromwellian wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native applications already have subscription models so I don’t get this. And are mobile apps running in locked down OSes truly “native” either? Whether they’re written in WASM or Swift, if they are locked behind an App Store subscription, whether they’re downloaded and stored on the device filesystem permanently or downloaded on the fly and cached as needed is irrelevant as the end user still lacks control and you s…

> We once celebrated the Web and the idea of ephemerality, portability, “view source” and inspect, Back when the web was mostly traditional websites and documents, not apps. > And are mobile apps running in locked down OSes truly “native” either? Whether they’re written in WASM or Swift, if they are locked behind an App Store subscription, whether they’re downloaded and stored on the device filesystem permanently or…

What do you mean by full access? Native apps on platforms like iOS and Android run within containers that present a narrowed view of the full platform.

If you take a “native” library like QT or wXWindows or even OpenGL do you have “full access”? Any cross platform abstraction or portability layer will remove power and access.

Do we really want to argue for a world where all software is written as if the target is a game console to the metal, even when 90% of apps don’t need it?

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#129

Post by azakai »

mhoad wrote: post #25
chaz6 wrote: post #13

Only Chromium/Blink browsers are supported, so no Firefox or Safari. This is bad for the web.

Two very underfunded teams there trying to play catch up. Only one of them has an excuse though, the other is literally the most profitable company in the world who is strategically trying to make the web into a subpar platform for their own commercial interests.

As others already mentioned, funding is just one factor here.

Mozilla decided to stop focusing on porting such applications to the Web before 2020's layoffs, when Mozilla was still growing. The decision came after some management changes, basically: I don't think any individuals changed their minds, just those people happened to leave, and their replacements had different ideas.

(I personally disagreed with the new priorities at the time, and ended up leaving.)

Re: Photoshop’s journey to the web

#130

Post by ZetaZero »

mhoad wrote: post #25
chaz6 wrote: post #13

Only Chromium/Blink browsers are supported, so no Firefox or Safari. This is bad for the web.

Two very underfunded teams there trying to play catch up. Only one of them has an excuse though, the other is literally the most profitable company in the world who is strategically trying to make the web into a subpar platform for their own commercial interests.

Firefox has revenues of over $400M per year. I hear they have only 40 developers working directly on FF. Do the math
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