Photoshop Family is Expecting!
Photoshop has become a household name over the past few years. It might be in some part due to it being one of the biggest programs illegally downloaded and hacked. However, I like to stand on the more positive side and say it is because Adobe has done an amazing job of broadening their customer bases. For a long time Photoshop was a program that only photographers or graphic artists talked about. Adobe has changed that with the availability of the free Photoshop Album Starter Edition, Photoshop Elements for the amateur photographers and even Photoshop Lightroom for the professional photographer. All of these are trimmed or tweaked versions of their big brother Photoshop, which is part of the Creative Suite.
With this move into the broader customer base, the brand Photoshop has become a well known name. Many times the word Photoshop is used as an adjective when describing a photo that has been manipulated. You can hear the term used on television, in movies and even in news reports about a photographer who might have doctored a photo. You hear such things as… “Can you Photoshop my head onto that other person’s body?” or “That photo has been Photoshopped!” I have a very good feeling that if you asked a group of people if they knew what Photoshop is today as compared to 5 years ago, a larger percentage of them would know. It sounds like this percentage could grow in the near future with Adobe’s new plans. Rumors have been swirling for some time that Adobe is planning to release some type of online version of Photoshop. It appears these rumors are correct and Adobe is in fact planning to do so. On March 1 John Nack wrote in his Adobe Blog post “So, what’s this about a hosted Photoshop?”
“I view this evolution of Adobe imaging as a logical (and exciting) extension of what we’ve been doing for several years. The company recognized that one size doesn’t fit all, and that it’s possible to leverage core imaging technology & experience to build a variety of related solutions.”
He goes on to specifically cover that it will not be a full version of Photoshop by saying…
“To set expectations properly, I think it’s important to mention that by “Photoshop-branded” we don’t mean the professional version of Photoshop. The tools being discussed here are targeted at the consumer market–especially all the people using social networking and media sharing sites.”
Just as many other corporations have turned to the internet as another way to get their products out there as web versions, so is Adobe. It sounds like this could be the start of some major growth. More and more people are turning to web based programs for their everyday needs and with the explosion of social network online Adobe is doing it’s part to tap into that market. This will be yet another way to bring the Photoshop brand into even more homes.
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