The Great Smoky mountains

Photoshop is the most popular, most pirated, most feature–complete application in use by anyone using a computer. It is the sole source of income for thousands of designers. And it’s old, and needs to die.

It’s been 20 years, and nobody’s produced an alternative. And no, the GIMP doesn’t count. Okay, I’ll even go so far as a viable alternative. Seriously, not like there isn’t a market for it.

There just…isn’t…

The reason I bring this up is that there are a bunch of new image–editing apps for Mac OS X, but none of them can compete with Photoshop for sheer ability and features. In fact, most of them are glorified versions of the iPhoto clean–up editor–thing. None of these new apps are to what I would consider of ‘prosumer’ quality.

It’s not to say they aren’t going to get there. It’s that they aren’t there now. And they’ve only had close to 20 years to figure something out. I’ve used (and bought) some of the competitors, and I am waiting.

And hoping. But mostly just waiting.

Online photo editors

There’s quite a crop of online editors out there, but none of them are serious contenders. If you aren’t online, they have no value at all. Makes it difficult to edit photos on a plane.

The largest problem I have with them, though, is that they aren’t even as good as those $35 not–ready–for–prime–time apps. I can get freeware that works as well.

Don’t take that as a reason to quit — quite the opposite. I hope that they are as frustrated as I am, and are working to really improve what they have to offer. I would really love to like something that somebody is doing. Just give me something to love.

status: published
lastmod: '2009-01-10T12:41:40.000Z'
excerpt: 'It’s been 20 years, and nobody’s produced an alternative. And no, the GIMP doesn’t count. Okay, I’ll even go so far as a *viable* alternative. Seriously, not like there isn’t a market for it.'
author: meadowhill
categories:
  - Blog
cms: textpattern
custom:
  section: articles
  custom_1: photoshop  photo+editors gimp
  custom_2: 10.5 should have made this moot...and yet...
  custom_3: 'I can not believe there are not more apps ready to take the crown from Adobe. Mac OS X is built to completely revolutionize how we make apps, and their capabilities. Apple’s practically made it so you barely have to do anything to compete in this space.'
  custom_4: 'Version 10.5 really increased the firepower of developers, and I see they are biting the bullet and creating something. There may be diminishing returns [as others steal each other’s customers]. But I do think there is plenty of market out there.'