Not enough support from Adobe?

[smellyman]

Why do people love Adobe?



yuck...


I see too many home users waste money on MS Office and Adobe suites, thinking they need it. 99% of them do not. Makes me cry a bit inside.

[VeeDubb]

Why do people love Adobe?



yuck...


I see too many home users waste money on MS Office and Adobe suites, thinking they need it. 99% of them do not. Makes me cry a bit inside.

We might debate whether or not your 99% is anywhere near reality, but the simple truth is that some of us to need one or the other. The company where I work my day job runs MS Office. If I take work home, work on it in Libre Office, and then take it back to work, I have to spend almost as much time fixing things that got messed in the transition as I do actually working. Yes, that's gotten better over the last few years, but interoperability is critical, and Libre Office still just doesn't cut it for complex documents.

Likewise, my home business is in wedding photography. I've gotten to a place where I'm able to do everything I need using a combination of FOSS, and commercial software that is either native linux, or platform independent. However, there are companies that I would LOVE to be able to do business with, but simply can't because I can't run photoshop. For instance, vision artbooks. Last time I looked, their service required that photobooks be uploaded as fully layered PSD files, which despite some limited improvement in recent GIMP releases, just can't be done consistently with the level of quality and precision that you need when trying to sell someone a $600 wedding album.


All that being said, it still comes down to what many people have said already. The reason there's no photoshop on linux is simple.

X=The potential revenue from porting photoshop to linux.

Y=The total cost of development, marketing and support, which currently includes a nightmare of different toolkits, inconsistent color management (which is critical for real graphics work), and different support tools in different distributions.

When X>Y, we'll have native versions of Adobe CS, MS Office, Top Tier gaming, and just about any other commercial software you can think of. The linux community is growing, and all of the things that increase the costs are slowly coming down, and if Mir (or wayland) is designed with color management in mind from the ground up, we may see some real interest from Adobe, but until then, we're out of luck.

[Ian Clark]

Adobe©®™ hates us the same way all bureaucrats hate us. all they want is to breathe our oxygen for another day, and take no pride in their work. good workers want to finish the job and move on to more important things, but adobe wants to keep the gravy train running forever until they or their grandsons' grandsons die.

i'm on this thread because running xubuntu 12.04, got another sudden flash update and had to restart my computer in the middle of doing a lot of web design work. i'm searching around for when we can possibly use html 5 and seriously delete this syphilytic orgre called Adobe Crash©®™ from our hard drives.

[coldraven]

>>P.S. Sorry for the spelling no spell-check in new fourms!!!

In Firefox just right click in any text input box that has more than two lines then select "Languages".

[aspergerian]

[offtopic]Why can't you run digikam on Xubuntu?[/offtopic]

After retreating to Xubuntu, I tried digiKam in Ubuntu Software Center. Wasn't the latest version of digiKam, didn't seem as slick as most recent version, so I chose not to install recent version given that full-fledged image processing on a netbook with 11.6" screen is more than my eyes need deal with.

[LillyDragon]

This thread is definitely an interesting read; it was nice hearing an actual Adobe engineer's perspective, as well as from the Linux community on the profitability of ports of Adobe brand products. The aforementioned developer makes very solid points, but hopefully some of those will change as the Linux culture and tech evolves.

As for the usability of GIMP, the latest version (2.8.4) brings a lot of things to the table, and considering I use it primarily to draw cartoon art, and some animations, it's perfect for an intermediate hobbyist like me. The interface is heavily customizable and I've changed my setup to make it more comfortable for my preference. (Like trimming tools from the toolbox that I don't use/need. Ticked single window mode, selection editor tab, path tool dialog, etc.) The Linux version of 2.8 also runs a little smoother than on Windows, so I'm always happy to run GIMP from the Linux side of things.

However, I've learned more than half of its tools functions in just a year's time of heavy usage, and starting to want more; the boundaries of mystery with the program are closing in. I'm also not sure if its stabilizers will be enough when I get a tablet, and I've heard GIMP is not the best for painting either. (Although it's fully possible and I have seen it done, but Krita's brush engines look far more advanced and organic.) I've been studying tutorials on Krita for painting, and may continue serious vectoring with Inkscape's numerous advanced path tools; it's also tempting to purchase a license for PaintTool SAI.

But I digress. Point is, I feel that GIMP is a great starting point for digital artists, and even has some tools that aren't included with Photoshop Elements, for instance. The interface is simple, easy to customize, and the wealth of tools is overwhelming; the limitations aren't immediately obvious and your imagination won't go to waste. Essentially, it's like "the jack of all trades" with its art tools, as one of my friends put it, giving you all the various basics you need for editing. Besides that, it's free, as in freedom, so discovering if you want to pursue art more seriously isn't an expensive venture. You don't need Photoshop just to start out, that's kinda overkill.

However, like the program's namesake likely implies, GIMP may constantly be playing catch up with other art software; there is simply no obvious replacement for Photoshop if you absolutely need its advanced tool set, hence the strong desire for a native port that I've read about in this topic. It would be nice, but for the moment, that can only be dreamed of, so doing what you can with WINE is the best we have right now, and it's far better than nothing. (Older versions of Photoshop do run well under WINE, at least; CS2 is perfect with zero workarounds for me.)

[VeeDubb]

I think you hit a lot of good points there. I also hope some of the pitfalls of porting to linux will improve, and I think that both Wayland and Mir have the potential to help, although the multiple toolkits will continue to be an issue until they are somehow unified.

As for the usability of Gimp, I think you hit the nail right on the head. It probably is a valid replacement for Photoshop Elements, and as a few people have pointed out, there are a lot of people running CS that really don't need to be. However, gimp just isn't ready to be considered a replacement for serious commercial graphic design.

[Hugh Mulqueen]

This thread is definitely an interesting read; it was nice hearing an actual Adobe engineer's perspective, as well as from the Linux community on the profitability of ports of Adobe brand products. The aforementioned developer makes very solid points, but hopefully some of those will change as the Linux culture and tech evolves.

As for the usability of GIMP, the latest version (2.8.4) brings a lot of things to the table, and considering I use it primarily to draw cartoon art, and some animations, it's perfect for an intermediate hobbyist like me. The interface is heavily customizable and I've changed my setup to make it more comfortable for my preference. (Like trimming tools from the toolbox that I don't use/need. Ticked single window mode, selection editor tab, path tool dialog, etc.) The Linux version of 2.8 also runs a little smoother than on Windows, so I'm always happy to run GIMP from the Linux side of things.

However, I've learned more than half of its tools functions in just a year's time of heavy usage, and starting to want more; the boundaries of mystery with the program are closing in. I'm also not sure if its stabilizers will be enough when I get a tablet, and I've heard GIMP is not the best for painting either. (Although it's fully possible and I have seen it done, but Krita's brush engines look far more advanced and organic.) I've been studying tutorials on Krita for painting, and may continue serious vectoring with Inkscape's numerous advanced path tools; it's also tempting to purchase a license for PaintTool SAI.

But I digress. Point is, I feel that GIMP is a great starting point for digital artists, and even has some tools that aren't included with Photoshop Elements, for instance. The interface is simple, easy to customize, and the wealth of tools is overwhelming; the limitations aren't immediately obvious and your imagination won't go to waste. Essentially, it's like "the jack of all trades" with its art tools, as one of my friends put it, giving you all the various basics you need for editing. Besides that, it's free, as in freedom, so discovering if you want to pursue art more seriously isn't an expensive venture. You don't need Photoshop just to start out, that's kinda overkill.

However, like the program's namesake likely implies, GIMP may constantly be playing catch up with other art software; there is simply no obvious replacement for Photoshop if you absolutely need its advanced tool set, hence the strong desire for a native port that I've read about in this topic. It would be nice, but for the moment, that can only be dreamed of, so doing what you can with WINE is the best we have right now, and it's far better than nothing. (Older versions of Photoshop do run well under WINE, at least; CS2 is perfect with zero workarounds for me.)

I was hoping there would be some logical points being made on this, you hit the nail on the head. No need for me to elaborate anything else. On your point about touch devices. Touch is still sort-of in beta for most companies. Some use capacitor screens or resister screens. So I recommend you go for Wacom touch tablets for the moment unless theres a new cheap touch screen thats doing the business at the moment! I did my stuff on the Wacom for a while (Till I sat on it! and broke the thing). Thats the way it goes for some more than others...

It works okay with GIMP and as you say its "a jack of all trades".

PS thanks for the tip the spell check is working now...

[LillyDragon]

I think you hit a lot of good points there. I also hope some of the pitfalls of porting to linux will improve, and I think that both Wayland and Mir have the potential to help, although the multiple toolkits will continue to be an issue until they are somehow unified.

As for the usability of Gimp, I think you hit the nail right on the head. It probably is a valid replacement for Photoshop Elements, and as a few people have pointed out, there are a lot of people running CS that really don't need to be. However, gimp just isn't ready to be considered a replacement for serious commercial graphic design.

True, the multitude of libraries and toolkits offers Linux users a lot of choice, but it's all hardly unified yet, so I'm hoping for the same in the future. And yeah, GIMP's not yet ready for commercial quality graphic design, but I think it does wonders for the hobby sector as it is now.

I was hoping there would be some logical points being made on this, you hit the nail on the head. No need for me to elaborate anything else. On your point about touch devices. Touch is still sort-of in beta for most companies. Some use capacitor screens or resister screens. So I recommend you go for Wacom touch tablets for the moment unless theres a new cheap touch screen thats doing the business at the moment! I did my stuff on the Wacom for a while (Till I sat on it! and broke the thing). Thats the way it goes for some more than others...

It works okay with GIMP and as you say its "a jack of all trades".

Sorry to hear about your tablet, ouch. ;__; Yeah, Wacom's pretty much the household name in tablets, and I'm considering a Bamboo Splash pretty soon, since it's the best compromise between value and functionality I can find in the Wacom lineup. As for touch screens, Wacom's Cintiq models are pretty amazing, but I believe those are more expensive than some Macintosh systems! I wouldn't be able to justify purchasing one until I really needed it.

And GIMP works okay with Wacom tablets? Last I remember, 2.8 broke compatibility with a lot of tablet models, and one of my friends did not feel the program was responsive enough with the quicker strikes of the pen. Have some of those issues been resolved in recent updates to GIMP?

[iamkuriouspurpleoranj]

Linux doesn't have to 100% replicate Windows' functionality to be adequate, viable and attractive. I am thinking of a friend who is a successful salesman. He has plenty of money and uses a computer at home. However, he has no need of MS Office, Adobe suite etc. and does not need to take his work home with him. He should be on Linux for his home computing. I will try and "sell" the idea to him.

As for Adobe, the reality is that Adobe wants a stable unified market that spends money. This could in time exist with Ubuntu/Mint, which in developer terms is a single OS. However, there is no magic world where Adobe starts developing for all kinds of Linux e.g. Gentoo or even Debian, with a Linux community that remains free of the culture that exists on proprietary systems. We have a choice: Do we want to be a market or a community? Adobe will develop for a market, once this becomes sizeable enough for it be worth the extra development investment. However, as we have seen, developing for a community is not an attractive investment opportunity for them.