Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 64 posts

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#21

Post by krilnon »

liquidise wrote: post #10
samsolomon wrote: post #2

I have to worry every time Adobe makes an acquisition. Seldom do the products improve.

Though the adoption has fallen, ActionScript 3 was a near strict improvement over 2, and it was released a good while after the Macromedia acquisition.

It was primarily developed at Macromedia, if you don't count that Waldemar Horwat and others greatly influenced its design via the whole JS2/ES4 situation in the years prior. That's why AVM2's IR used to be called the Macromedia Intermediate Representation, for example.

There were public betas available about 6 months after the acquisition, which didn't leave Adobe much time to change anything. Even the main APIs, like those in playerglobal.swc, almost all have a copyright stamp of 2005 in them.

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#23

Post by subdane »

ThomPete wrote: post #14
Xeoncross wrote: post #6

There really isn't any other software to compete at this point. Aviary and Gimp were the only Photoshop competitors. Inkscape and Aviary were the only Illustrator competitors.

There is a reason for this. It makes no sense to make a photoshop competitor as this is not where we are heading. Instead we are heading towards vectors as the primary asset which means toward visual editors that allow for scripting and much more granular control off assets such as animiation. In 5-10 years ex. Sketch and other much more dynamic environments will be one of the de-facto standards as the older generati…

We're still tied to Adobe products like Illustrator and Phototshop, but to your point more than half of the product comps we do now we do in Sketch

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#24

Post by hnriot »

mmanfrin wrote: post #20
liquidise wrote: post #13

Surprising negativity in here, an observation to consider: HN tends to be biased regarding acquisitions. Some companies, like Google or Apple, are praised for sage decisions and invaluable acqui-hires. Others, like Yahoo and Adobe, get panned for similar moves as trying to eliminate competing products or otherwise flailing capital. As i see it, Adobe identified a group of devs uniquely qualified to bring domain knowl…

I think the negativity comes not from the fact that Adobe bought them, but that Aviary was the main, visible competition to Adobe. Google and Apple get panned all the time for acquisitions, what are you talking about? Did you not see the thread when Apple announced they were buying Beats? Or every other Google-acquisition thread about users bemoaning the possible shuttering of the purchased service? People aren't hat…

come on, that's just crazy, Aviary is no competition for Adobe. There are a million photo editing apps, and Aviary is one of them, but Adobe is the giant gorilla in the game, the go-to software for designers and photographers.

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#25

Post by jkestner »

eli wrote: post #15
andrewljohnson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixelmator is the best photoshop replacement IMO.

I like & use Pixelmator too, but it's really a Photoshop Elements competitor.

Depends on your usage, I guess. I haven't used Photoshop Elements, but Pixelmator does 90% of what I used to use Photoshop for, from photo editing, color correction and retouching to prep for web. Really only go to Photoshop for certain filters, serious masking and color contortions. I use it more than I used to use Photoshop as it got bloated, and Pixelmator launches in a flash.

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#26

Post by troymc »

mmanfrin wrote: post #20
liquidise wrote: post #13

Surprising negativity in here, an observation to consider: HN tends to be biased regarding acquisitions. Some companies, like Google or Apple, are praised for sage decisions and invaluable acqui-hires. Others, like Yahoo and Adobe, get panned for similar moves as trying to eliminate competing products or otherwise flailing capital. As i see it, Adobe identified a group of devs uniquely qualified to bring domain knowl…

I think the negativity comes not from the fact that Adobe bought them, but that Aviary was the main, visible competition to Adobe. Google and Apple get panned all the time for acquisitions, what are you talking about? Did you not see the thread when Apple announced they were buying Beats? Or every other Google-acquisition thread about users bemoaning the possible shuttering of the purchased service? People aren't hat…

I'm not sure I agree with "Aviary was the main, visible competition to Adobe." Yes, Aviary offers image editing apps for mobile, but that's a very competitive market. There are lots of image-editing and image-sharing apps for mobile.

Aviary's special sauce is something I don't think Adobe even has: a way for developers to quickly add a photo editor to their app or website (i.e. a photo editor SDK).

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#27

Post by nkozyra »

hnriot wrote: post #24
mmanfrin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the negativity comes not from the fact that Adobe bought them, but that Aviary was the main, visible competition to Adobe. Google and Apple get panned all the time for acquisitions, what are you talking about? Did you not see the thread when Apple announced they were buying Beats? Or every other Google-acquisition thread about users bemoaning the possible shuttering of the purchased service? People aren't hat…

come on, that's just crazy, Aviary is no competition for Adobe. There are a million photo editing apps, and Aviary is one of them, but Adobe is the giant gorilla in the game, the go-to software for designers and photographers.

I think you're making an analogous comparison, which is not necessarily the right one.

Aviary needs to compete not on features so much as audience. If Aviary can do 80% of what Adobe does for some % of users and it convinces those users to eschew their CC subscription, they are a competitor.

In other words, it's less the product and more the people.

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#28

Post by koenbok »

mmanfrin wrote: post #20
liquidise wrote: post #13

Surprising negativity in here, an observation to consider: HN tends to be biased regarding acquisitions. Some companies, like Google or Apple, are praised for sage decisions and invaluable acqui-hires. Others, like Yahoo and Adobe, get panned for similar moves as trying to eliminate competing products or otherwise flailing capital. As i see it, Adobe identified a group of devs uniquely qualified to bring domain knowl…

I think the negativity comes not from the fact that Adobe bought them, but that Aviary was the main, visible competition to Adobe. Google and Apple get panned all the time for acquisitions, what are you talking about? Did you not see the thread when Apple announced they were buying Beats? Or every other Google-acquisition thread about users bemoaning the possible shuttering of the purchased service? People aren't hat…

I think the competition is Sketch and Pixate.

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#29

Post by nkozyra »

endergen wrote: post #19
jpablo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photoshop is for editing photos, not for drawing "assets". Unless you are trying to tell me that digital cameras will produce a vector drawing of scenes, I don't see bitmap editing software going away anytime soon, or ever.

Photoshop is not used primarily for editing photos in the software industry from my experience. In a world with responsive design needs vector based just gives you more versions of assets at different resolutions for less effort than any other approach. Sure photo editing is one use for it. But much of it is in creating icons, mockups, non photo realistic things, and more.

How Photoshop is used doesn't really matter - it's intended as a photo editing product. Adobe already has an illustration / vector product and there's a reason they're separate.

Re: Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary

#30

Post by booruguru »

liquidise wrote: post #13

Surprising negativity in here, an observation to consider: HN tends to be biased regarding acquisitions. Some companies, like Google or Apple, are praised for sage decisions and invaluable acqui-hires. Others, like Yahoo and Adobe, get panned for similar moves as trying to eliminate competing products or otherwise flailing capital. As i see it, Adobe identified a group of devs uniquely qualified to bring domain knowl…

> Others, like Yahoo and Adobe, get panned for similar moves as trying to eliminate competing products or otherwise flailing capital.

Yahoo destroys everything it touches, except Flick (which could have been Instagram before there was Instagram...but settled on just being good enough to stay alive).

Adobe makes a lot of bloated, expensive products of questionable value. It's not a horrible company, but nobody would benefit from them having a monopoly.

Post reply on HN