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

Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

chrome.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 254 posts

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#221

Post by dagw »

unhammer wrote: post #209
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with GIMP isn't its featureset, but its interface. It's so foreign to anyone who works with graphics that whatever UI metaphors it uses fail to resonate with people, so they just end up confused. What GIMP probably needs is an overhaul that copies what Photoshop does. People understand Photoshop, and it's the industry standard.

I've never understood the problem with the GIMP UI, what is it about it that is so foreign? From what I can tell the UI's look fairly similar too: https://gtchan1.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/5-gui-photoshop.... http://www.gimpchat.com/files/196_2012-05-12_214936.jpg There's various widgets that contain e.g. tools, layers, history, fonts, tool options; and of course each tool might have its own options. (Also, the tea…

From what I can tell the UI's look fairly similar

They may look superficially similar, and at a high level have the same tools, but from a fundamental workflow point of view there are too many things that are just very different (non-destructive editing, smart objects etc).

the team itself have said in various ways that they'll never have as their goal to be a "Photoshop clone"

And that would be fine and if they'd done something unique or innovative with the UI and really made it their own. Unfortunately they didn't and they're stuck looking kind of like a half-baked Photoshop clone. And as long as that is kind of what they look like, then that is how they'll be judged.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#222

Post by dagw »

pyre wrote: post #168
ChuckMcM wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh no. You see the reason personal computing exists is because it was people who wanted this level of control and "their own computer" started using these cheezy "calculator chips" to build their own computers. What they could do was a lot less than what the mainframes/minicomputers/workstations could do but you could own your own. All of those things are still true. But there is a rub. Today you can go on some warez…

> get a cracked Adobe CSx - What about when Adobe makes a change when going CS2 => CS3 that I don't like, or that is detrimental to me? If I 'own a copy' I can just continue using it. With 'CS in the cloud' I have to upgrade because that's what Adobe wants. - To step outside of software for a second, what happens when (e.g.) George Lucas decides that the "special edition" version of Star Wars is the 'real one' and re…

With CS in the cloud' I have to upgrade because that's what Adobe wants.

Not that I'm a supporter of Adobe's cloud strategy, but as of the past 6 month or so you have a choice between using the current version and the previous version. We'll see when the next version comes out if they'll only support two versions or if they'll let you chose any previous cloud supported version.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#223

Post by zarkov99 »

astrocat wrote: post #91
ChuckMcM wrote: post #84

And this is the logical conclusion of the death of the 56K baud modem. There was a prophetic (if early) contest at Sun to 'imagine the future' and the winner got a SPARCStation. As a networking guy I tried to imagine what was going to change when the 'big yellow hose' (which is what 10MB Ethernet looked like at the time) came right into your living room. And one of the things that changed was that you could work at '…

The power/electricity analogy here is what's really key - there will come a time when the ubiquity of being "online" will be the same as the ubiquity of "the power is on." It's so prevalent in modern society we really don't think about it. It took me a while to realize that this is where Google is headed with ChromeOS/Chromebooks. Ultimately, "applications/apps" will not exist, there will just be the web and all pers…

I am not sure it is that awesome. You get a closed platform that only runs what hosting companies decide is worth supporting. What is this going to do for niche open source apps?

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#224

Post by Closie »

tree_of_item wrote: post #156
JohnBooty wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just use free (as in freedom) software instead. If the last several decades have shown us anything, it's that the free software movement is excellent at creating some kinds of software (operating systems, development tolls, severs) and generally pretty bad at many other kinds of software (games, content creation software, etc).

The reason for this is that those kinds of software require lots of money to pay developers to work on them full time, because they aren't straightforward applications of the sort of thing you'd get in an engineering/computer science education. Recent years have suggested that "software as a service" is the only way to get this money due to rampant piracy. If the free software community doesn't like this state of aff…

Completely agree. Although the open source movement has plenty of great engineers and is great at solving complex software problems, it doesn't tend to have everything else that great software companies have.

UI designers, customer researchers, graphics artists, strategy teams (to set an overall vision) e.t.c. tend to be under-represented compared to other software companies.

I also think that open source software tends to be less innovative, as 'design by committee' isn't something that is followed inside for-profit companies with closed software.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#225

Post by UweSchmidt »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #119
anon1385 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not awesome at all. It's the death of personal computing. What to use Photoshop? Pay a perpetual monthly fee forever, with no control over which version of the software you are using. Adobe jacked up the price this year for the new version despite a lack of new features? Tough, nothing you can do about it. It's either pay up or lose access. The new version is buggy? Tough luck. Want to modify any of the software…

Uh no. You see the reason personal computing exists is because it was people who wanted this level of control and "their own computer" started using these cheezy "calculator chips" to build their own computers. What they could do was a lot less than what the mainframes/minicomputers/workstations could do but you could own your own. All of those things are still true. But there is a rub. Today you can go on some warez…

Your first paragraph is spot-on: People wanted and got control of their own computer.

However this is clearly changing now:

As data, and now functionality, keeps moving towards the cloud, quality goes up again (a polished app running on all kinds of devices), but there's little chance to tinker, to do it your own way.

Or, where would you say Stallman's 4 Freedoms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition) fit in these days?

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#226

Post by rileyriley »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #146
ChuckMcM wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that I'm going to be a bit pedantic here, and it is not an argument I would support, but your statement *"Contrast with files, which I own ..." which is only true in a limited sense. If you have a book, in a file, which is stored on your device for your Kindle app, Amazon will tell you that you don't own it, what you "own" is a right to view it in the Kindle app for as long as your maintain your side of the…

> the only reason that it is in a "file" today is because Amazon hasn't figured out how to give you access to it without giving you a file. (...) but it's important to note that their thinking hasn't changed, only their implementation has Yes, I understand that and I agree with you here. I'm not complaining that they changed their thinking; I'm saying that their thinking sucks (for the user), and that the more they i…

It's so much easier to poke about inside a web app.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#227

Post by 72deluxe »

eru wrote: post #141
sliverstorm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I entirely agree and preach latency often, there are two major points I would like to make: 1) Remote computing doesn't have to use X11. The local machine can do some of the lifting. Wolfram Alpha on mobile phones is a good example of this- a server does the crunching, but neither is the client side a dumb terminal. 2) I cross my fingers that one day latency will be prioritized more... IMO the majority of laten…

And with modern browsers and AJAX we already have clients in place that can deal with latency better than X11 servers.

True, but is the real solution to remove the latency in the first place and just run it on your local machine without a network connection? (Like ordinary desktop software that we have at the moment.....; seems the terminal approach to software is attempting to fix a problem that has already been fixed - just run it locally)

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#228

Post by TeMPOraL »

rileyriley wrote: post #226
TeMPOraL wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only reason that it is in a "file" today is because Amazon hasn't figured out how to give you access to it without giving you a file. (...) but it's important to note that their thinking hasn't changed, only their implementation has Yes, I understand that and I agree with you here. I'm not complaining that they changed their thinking; I'm saying that their thinking sucks (for the user), and that the more they i…

It's so much easier to poke about inside a web app.

Yeah right. Especially one with a backend.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#229

Post by orkoden »

luch wrote: post #210
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with GIMP isn't its featureset, but its interface. It's so foreign to anyone who works with graphics that whatever UI metaphors it uses fail to resonate with people, so they just end up confused. What GIMP probably needs is an overhaul that copies what Photoshop does. People understand Photoshop, and it's the industry standard.

Agreed, GIMP is a horrendous piece of software. I know it is extremely powerful (for example combined with G'MIC) but the fact you can't do the most simple transformations (rescale, move, strech and rotate) on the freehand tool speaks a lot about its usability. Inkscape on the other hand really is a viable alternative to Illustrator.

Every time I try Inkscape it has been a big disappointment. It doesn't come close to old versions of Freehand, not even speaking of current Illustrator. Even indie devs like http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/ do a lot better job at illustrating.

Re: Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop

#230

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #135
mwcampbell wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This optimistic outlook ignores the pesky reality of latency. Using VNC, X11, or an equivalent protocol over a connectiion to a data center hundreds or thousands of miles away isn't the same as an X terminal connected to a server in the same office buildinig.

While I entirely agree and preach latency often, there are two major points I would like to make: 1) Remote computing doesn't have to use X11. The local machine can do some of the lifting. Wolfram Alpha on mobile phones is a good example of this- a server does the crunching, but neither is the client side a dumb terminal. 2) I cross my fingers that one day latency will be prioritized more... IMO the majority of laten…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN