October 12th, 2009

Adobe releases photo-editing app for iPhone

Posted by David Morgenstern @ 1:29 pm

Categories: Adobe, App Store, iPhone OS 3.0

Tags: Apple iPhone, Adobe Systems Inc., Adobe PhotoShop, Photograph, Smart Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, David Morgenstern

Under its Photoshop brand, Adobe Systems on Friday released a free photo-editing app for the iPhone, called, wait for it: Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone.

Despite the awful title, it appears to be a useful stand-alone editor for iPhone pix. Adobe must want users to upload images to a free 2GB account at photoshop.com, hence the name. Still, it offers a number of interesting editing tools without the account.

(And no doubt Adobe must want to make sure that potential customers will understand that this isn’t Photoshop for iPhone, as if it could be. Rather, it’s just a bit of Photoshop and a push towards boosting photo sharing on its site.)

Here’s a bit of the description from the App Store:

MORE FUN ON THE RUN
It’s now easy to improve photos on your iPhone. Choose between a variety of one-touch effects, or simply drag your finger across the screen to quickly crop, rotate, or adjust a photos color. Get artistic by applying Filters like Soft Focus or Sketch. Never fear. Photoshop.com Mobile lets you undo and redo changes until you get the picture you want, and we always save a copy of the original photo.

Top edit features
Basics: crop, rotate, and flip
Color: exposure, saturation, tint, black and white
Filters: sketch, soft focus
Effects: vibrant, pop, border, vignette blur, warm vintage, rainbow, white glow, soft black and white

Adobe blogger John Nack offers a set of screenshots.

February 15th, 2009

Flash 10 coming to most mobiles; except iPhone

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 10:04 pm

Categories: Adobe, Flash, Software, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Adobe Systems Inc., Mobile, Macromedia Flash Player, Smart Phones, Advertising & Promotion, Palm OS, Handhelds, Cellular Phones, Operating Systems

Adobe announced that Flash Player 10, a full-fledged version of the Adobe Flash player is coming soon to a whole slew of smartphones at the GSMA Mobile World Congress which opened Monday in Barcelona, Spain. Unfortunately, the iPhone isn’t one of them.

The full Flash Player 10 (not the stripped-down mobile version) will be available on smartphones running Windows Mobile, Google’s Android, Nokia S60/Symbian, and the new Palm operating systems beginning in early 2010.

When asked about the iPhone, Anup Murarka, director of Technology Strategy and Partner Development for Adobe said:

“We would love to see it on the iPhone, too… But it’s Apple’s decision on when and how they support any new technology. So we will continue to work on it.”

Tip: CNet

December 4th, 2008

Adobe lays off 600; skips Macworld Expo

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 7:27 am

Categories: Adobe, Economy, Finance, Layoffs, Macworld Expo

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Macworld, Workforce Management, Operational Accounting, Human Resources, Finance, Jason D. O'Grady

Adobe Systems, Inc. announced yesterday in a statement that it will eliminate 600 full-time positions, or roughly 8 percent of its workforce, amid weaker than expected fourth quarter earnings.

Fellow ZD blogger Larry Dignan notes that demand for Creative Suite 4 was weaker than expected and the main cause for the shortfall in fourth quarter revenue. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen added that the global economic downturn hurt revenue.

The layoffs come a day after the San Jose, CA-based software developer announced that it will not have a booth at the upcoming Macworld Expo trade show and conference in San Francisco which runs from 5-9 January 2009.

Adobe has decided to shift its focus at the Macworld trade show this year… Macworld is a valuable industry show and we will still be an active part of it with members of our product team involved in Macworld tracks, including a full day of CS4 demo sessions with Adobe evangelists on Wednesday, January 7.

October 1st, 2008

Adobe actively developing a Flash Player iPhone

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:02 am

Categories: Adobe, Flash, Software, iPhone

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Macromedia Flash Player, Apple Inc., Games, Personal Technology, Jason D. O'Grady

Flash Magazine reports Adobe Systems’ Senior Director of Engineering Paul Betlem confirmed that Adobe is developing a Flash Player for the iPhone at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference in Brighton, UK. The only problem is that Apple controls which apps get approved for distribution in the App Store and Flash, unfortunately, isn’t going to be one of them.

Jon Gruber said it best:

If there were a Flash player for the iPhone, you could write games and other software in Flash rather than in Cocoa Touch. And you could sell games and apps directly for the Flash player, completely circumventing the App Store. Does this sound like something Apple would allow?

If Apple won’t allow apps like Podcaster and Mailwrangler (let alone a competing Web browser) what are the odds that Apple would allow flash? Unfortunately, it just isn’t going to happen folks.

The question is: does Adobe go rogue and release the code for Cydia/jailbroken iPhones. I doubt that too, but one can dream…

July 8th, 2008

Why does Adobe Lightroom look so different than its content-creation cousins?

Posted by David Morgenstern @ 11:22 am

Categories: Adobe, Aperture

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Adobe Lightroom, Digital Cameras, Blogging, Digital Photography, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Internet, David Morgenstern

In a recent video interview, Adobe Lightroom UI designer Phil Clevenger talks about what it takes to make a user interface and the evolution of the digital photo editing product.

The interview was posted on the blog of Lightroom marketing manager Frederick Johnson of San Francisco.

Clevenger worked on MetaCreations’ KTP Bryce and Photo Soap. (For those that are too young to remember them, the Kai Krause inspired products had a different UI sensibility. They were unlike the usual bread-and-butter programs of the day, or even today. An acquired taste for some.)

So, what are the qualities of a good UI engineer? His work on KTP Bryce provided the checklist.

Clevenger said that the first version of KTP Bryce was designed by an engineer for other engineers. While the results that could be had from the sofware were compelling, it wasn’t a program that “lay people,” including Clevenger himself, could use. The software needed to be taken apart, he said.

“I thought that it took men in white lab coats with very thick glasses and slide rules. [Instead] it takes an ear [to hear] what people need and the willingness to stand up and say ‘this needs to be different.” You know, it takes a thick skin. And some follow-through. … I really love the process.”

Clevenger said that the Lightroom interface was devised out of thin air. The team waqs “determined not to use any legacy Adobe frameworks or UI conventions, so it was a completely open book.”

Read the rest of this entry »

June 5th, 2008

What do Mac developers want from Apple?

Posted by David Morgenstern @ 12:17 pm

Categories: Adobe, MagSafe, Video, WWDC, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Developer, Apple Macintosh, Performance, Operating System, API, Apple Inc., CPU, Graphics, GPU

In advance of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, several longtime Mac developers share hopes, suggestions and even concerns for their primary technology provider. The discussion spans iPhone, graphics acceleration and Apple’s strategy for technology licensing.

Of course, the talk across the industry is about the iPhone. Still, that buzz worries some software developers, such as one developer in the professional graphics market (who declined attribution).

“As a software developer for Mac OS X, I just hope that Apple doesn’t start cutting back there in favor of the iPhone. Now, the iPhone is great, don’t get me wrong, but as far as I know, the Mac still makes more money,” he said.

Remember that a year ago Apple said that the testing of the iPhone required it to shift engineering and QA resources from the Mac OS X team away from Leopard testing and bug fixing. This resulted in a delay to the introduction of the long-awaited OS.

“Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones,” Apple executives said at the time.

From all we can see from the WWDC schedule, the iPhone and its SDK and tools will be the big target for developers this year. While there’s a strong pitch to IT managers over Mac integration, some of that discussion appears to have a strong iPhone bent.

A developer of tools for the professional video effects market, Sean Safreed, co-founder of Red Giant Software, also said he wasn’t ” particularly interested in the iPhone or the iPhone features from a developer perspective.”

However, he was concerned about the performance of Mac graphics and how Apple can help developers to improve its performance.

Read the rest of this entry »

May 30th, 2008

What gets Photoshop cooking?

Posted by David Morgenstern @ 11:14 am

Categories: Adobe, Leopard, Software, Vista, Windows

Tags: Adobe PhotoShop, Apple Macintosh, Performance, Microsoft Windows Vista, PDF Presentation, Mac User, Performance Management, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Human Resources

Adobe Photoshop has been the app of choice for several generations of image editors. Tweaking its performance is a hobby for some, but what practices can really make a difference?

Adobe blogger John Nack recently posted notes from the performance tuning presentation offered at Photoshop World by Photoshop co-architect Russell Williams and Adam Jerugim, the performance testing lead. This presentation is an annual event and filled with interesting tidbits. The PDF presentation is here.

The presentation offers advice on how to go about testing your system and workflow as well as some general tips about performance improvements.

Of course, monitoring CPU performance with Activity Monitor is an important first step. It’s useful to find things that might be taking away CPU cycles from your image crunching.

For example, why do usually sensible graphics pros insist upon running memory-hogging applications, such as browsers (they are all bad) and iTunes (or QuickTime Player)? Turn them off!

But there can be hidden junk on a machine running in the background. The presentation said that Mac users were much better off on this front than Windows users:

Applies to Windows users a bit more – Macintoshes don’t seem to suffer the gradual performance decline that XP seems to. Vista isn’t supposed to either. And so many Windows machines come with junk now.

Most of us engineers do a fresh OS install on any new machine. We start from a known state and control what gets installed. At least scan Add/Remove programs on a new machine and remove anything you don’t think you’ll need.

Be careful about what you install. In theory, an uninstall cleans things up – but it doesn’t usually work that way on Windows. Mac users are in good shape here. On Windows, scan through Add/Remove Programs (Vista: Programs…) once a month or so to see what things you really didn’t use or need and remove them.

The engineers suggested that Mac users look occasionally at /System/Library/Startup to make sure nothing unwanted has been added.

Read the rest of this entry »

May 13th, 2008

It's official: Adobe GoLive is GoDead

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 3:12 pm

Categories: Adobe, Software

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Sales Strategy, Sales, Jason D. O'Grady

I just received the following email notice from Adobe that they’ve discontinued development of GoLive so that they can focus on DreamWeaver.

Dear Adobe software owner:

Please take note that Adobe has discontinued development and sales of Adobe® GoLive® web authoring software. This decision — effective April 28, 2008 — was made so we can focus our development efforts and sales resources on Adobe Dreamweaver® software, our web design and development application.

Dreamweaver plays a pivotal role in the web and cross-media workflows supported by Adobe Creative Suite®, as well as in Adobe’s platform for Rich Internet Applications, including Adobe Flex® and Adobe AIR™.  Concentrating on Dreamweaver will enable us to better serve the needs of customers who want to create engaging websites and applications.

Personally, I was a GoLive user, but is anyone really surprised by this? Although Adobe would have probably have preferred to keep their HTML editor (instead of MacroMedia’s) Dreamweaver had a much larger installed base.

Any other GoLive users out there disappointed by the announcement?

May 8th, 2008

Seeking the iPhone in Adobe's annual analyst briefings

Posted by David Morgenstern @ 6:45 pm

Categories: Adobe, Flash, Google, Microsoft, Windows, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Adobe Systems Inc., Google Inc., Corporate Communications, Advertising & Promotion, Financial Accounting, Marketing, Finance, David Morgenstern

Even if you’re not an analyst, Adobe’s 2008 financial briefings available online make interesting viewing, from its showcase of new AIR tools to the “soul” of Adobe, Google and Microsoft. And then there’s the iPhone.

The recordings cover the morning and afternoon sessions as well as a Q&A session at the end of the day. The presentations include discussions of Adobe’s strategic vision, rich Internet application platforms and IDEs, creative applications, business products and a financial outlook.

Adobe Flex and AIR were very big on the technology demonstrations. A number of RIA (rich Internet apps) were shown, such as NASDAQ QMX, which replays microsecond data across a time frame. It was described as Tivo for the stock market.

On the financial side, company execs highlighted the heavy growth of some products that are buried in the reports of its segmented operational units.

For example, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Business Productivity Business Unit, Rob Tarkoff said that the Acrobat Connect Professional training platform saw compound annual growth rate of 150 percent. The virtualized analyst meeting provided a good demonstration of Acrobat Connect Pro.

As is always the case, software companies are trying to find ways of breaking out of the cyclical nature of the business. Licensing and video services revenue were discussed as helping the situation, such as the Flash Cast mobile video solution.

In addition, Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Narayen stressed to the analyst audience that some of the company’s “science projects” were closer to market than they might appear and would be building revenue streams.

Here are couple of impressions after viewing selections of the presentations:

Read the rest of this entry »

May 5th, 2008

Is Apple selling off its professional software titles?

Posted by David Morgenstern @ 4:51 pm

Categories: AAPL, Adobe, Microsoft, NAB, Video

Tags: Software, Adobe Systems Inc., Apple Inc., Video, Final Cut Pro, Corporate Communications, Marketing, David Morgenstern

The slimmest hint of a rumor can gain steam when cycled around the Internet. It seems to be happening with rumor that Apple is pitching its professional applications such as Final Cut Pro.

The rumor was buried below the fold in the Friday Pulpit posting by Robert X. Cringley. He said Apple was “quietly shopping around” its pro content creation apps at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas the other week.

The reason? Here’s his take:

It seems obvious to me, however, that there is only one real reason why Apple would sell off its professional applications and that’s to avoid antitrust problems when/if Apple buys Adobe Systems as I predicted at the beginning of the year. Final Cut Pro competes directly with Adobe Premiere. While in my opinion the Apple video software is clearly better, Jobs couldn’t be at NAB trying to sell Premiere — software he doesn’t yet own. Maybe there’s a planned bait-and-switch, seeing who is interested in Final Cut then trying to shift them to Premiere.

The major point here is that Adobe is in play, or at least Apple thinks so. The company has plenty of cash and stock to do the deal and plenty of incentive, too. Apple’s goal in acquiring Adobe would be to control first Flash and second Adobe’s emerging Air application platform. Adobe announced this week a broad industry initiative to extend Flash to mobile devices, but Apple wasn’t a participant. Why bother if you intend to shortly own Flash outright?

There are two big questions here: first is whether or not Apple was pitching its professional softwares at NAB and if so, what company would want them; and second, is whether Apple is looking at buying Adobe. And the whole “obvious” thing.

For the moment, let’s look at the first set of questions.

Read the rest of this entry »