An OS X based Photoshop Killer? Don’t hold your breath…

Filed under Software on November 18th, 2007

It starts with a simple recipy. Build an application with all the core Photoshop features but none of the bloat. Take advantage those fancy Apple Core technologies to build it in a few months. Give it an easier UI, so Aunt Tillie can bitmap. Sell it for less. Profit, you’ve just made a Photoshop killer.

It’s a simple plan isn’t it? Actually no. It’s something akin to simple, but not as good: it’s simplistic. It’s armchair software engineering, oblivious to the ways and needs of the software world. You have seen all those pleas for a “Photoshop killer” in blogs and forums and opinion pieces. Yet, this mythical beast never seems to emerge. Here’s why…

We *need* bloat

One man’s bloat is another man’s feature. Fact of life. Apart from some easily spotted oddities (certain translucent menubars come to mind), it’s very difficult to decide what’s useful and what’s bloat. You were never that hot about those fancy “custom brushes” in Photoshop? Well, my art depends on them, and you’re gonna have to pry them out of my cold, dead mouse pointer.

I know what you are thinking. This “keep it simple” thing worked with the iPod. The iPod is a phenomenal success and it actually has less features than it’s competitors. Well, yes. The difference is that the iPod is a special purpose gadget. People buy the iPod to (primarily) listen to music. In it’s purest form it’s expressed in the iPod shuffle. A play button. Music playing is several orders of magnitude simpler than what general image editing. And even with the iPod, features just keep piling up: image viewing, video, games, cover flow, wi-fi, web browing, buying music etc.

After all, does anyone actually wishes his software had less features? People might wish their software was easier to use. That is was snappier. That is had a more straightforward user interface. That it could hide options that you don’t need. That it took less time to load. Those are all genuine wishes. But wishing a program had less features? Seriously, who wants that? Even when people sometimes seem to be pitching for less features, they actually want some of all those other things, and (mistakenly) see “less features” as a means to this end.

Here’s an example from a recent review of Pixelmator:

In Pixelmator, I immediately missed Elements’ superb and comprehensive photo correction toolset, most particularly the Auto Smart Fix command and the Adjust Lighting and Adjust Color submenu selections, as well as the Spot Healing Brush, none of which are available in Pixelmator. (…) Other things that are missing include CMYK and RAW support (both to be added in later versions reportedly), and there are no guides and rulers in the document window.

And here’s another:

Typography Sucks
There really isn’t any pretty way to say this, but Pixelmator offers no real power over managing text in the interface. Whereas in Photoshop you can adjust the kerning, line height, font size, colour, and more by simply selecting the layer and changing those elements; in Pixelmator, there’s absolutely nothing for text manipulation.

The same things apply equally well to Acorn, Naked Light et al. Don’t get me wrong: they might be mighty fine programs in their own right. It’s their aptitude as Photoshop killers that we assess here.

Joel, of Fog Creek Software fame, has written one of the definitive opinion pieces on the issue of features vs bloat, Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth. In it, he writes:

A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20″ rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.

Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features. In the last 10 years I have probably heard of dozens of companies who, determined not to learn from each other, tried to release “lite” word processors that only implement 20% of the features. This story is as old as the PC. Most of the time, what happens is that they give their program to a journalist to review, and the journalist reviews it by writing their review using the new word processor, and then the journalist tries to find the “word count” feature which they need because most journalists have precise word count requirements, and it’s not there, because it’s in the “80% that nobody uses,” and the journalist ends up writing a story that attempts to claim simultaneously that lite programs are good, bloat is bad, and I can’t use this damn thing ’cause it won’t count my words. If I had a dollar for every time this has happened I would be very happy.

When you start marketing your “lite” product, and you tell people, “hey, it’s lite, only 1MB,” they tend to be very happy, then they ask you if it has their crucial feature, and it doesn’t, so they don’t buy your product.

So, if a fancy new piece of software comes along with less features, it won’t be a Photoshop killer. It could be a ImageWell killer. A GraphicConverter killer. An iPhoto killer. Just not a Photoshop killer.

What’s a Photoshop killer, anyway?

This second point follows from the first one. People (not just creative professionals) use Photoshop for a lot of different stuff. We retouch photographs. We draw things. We design webpage mockups. We convert RAW files. We airbrush imperfections off of cover girls. We work with bitmaps, vectors, text, paths, layers, brushes and filters.

Given the above, what it takes for a piece of software be a “Photoshop killer”?

Would a program aimed at simple bitmap editing (like Pixelmator) do? Would a program aimed towards painting and drawing (such as Painter or ArtRage) do? Would something aimed squarely at photographers (such as Aperture) do? Actually, most of those have at one time or another been called a “Photoshop killer”, yet Adobe’s behemoth just won’t die. Just because some random program fills your humble needs of croping and rotating doesn’t means it automatically qualifies as a Photoshop alternative.

My point is, if we are talking about a “Photoshop killer” proper, then the program will have to a) cover the whole ground that Photoshop does, b) sell a boatload of copies. The (a) part is needed in order to qualify as a Photoshop competitor. The (b) part is needed to justify the “killer” moniker.

The only program that comes to mind as having these two qualities is Macromedia’s Freehand. Sadly, this program, the only real competitor Photoshop ever had, is no more. It has ceased to be. It was killed after Adobe bought Macromedia.

It’s the resources, stupid

Developing a competent image editor is not an easy task. Actually, it’s an extremely difficult task. People magically expect some third party OS X developer or small software company to come up with something to compete with Photoshop. Well, it can’t be done.

Even Apple cannot just create a Photoshop killer. The only reason Aperture holds so well in the photographic workflow space is that it got out at a time when Adobe did not yet have a competing product. Even so, Adobe quickly built upon Lightroom (a rough, experimental project of Adobe Labs), to provide a competent alternative. That’s what top-notch code monkeys, relevant engineering experience (the Lightroom team had previously worked on ImageReady), a large code library, ample resources and a huge development budget buy.

Consider Pages as another example. Pages 1.0 one was a nice text editor application, but it was no match for Microsoft Word. Pages 3.0 is better by leaps and bounds but there are still a lot of things that it does not do (equation editor? bibliography support? native “Save to Word / HTML” option? multiple page orientations per document?). Sure, it’s getting close, but my point is it took Apple at least three revisions to produce a match for Microsoft Word. These things do not happen overnight.

Even Photoshop itself started small. As in “one developer” small. Then, time happend. 20 years have passed since mr. Knoll started working on it. Today’s Photoshop (or, 2000’s Photoshop for that matter) is the work of hundreds of programmers. It incorporates features and engineering experience and coding magic and fixes and third-party licensed code that span hundrends of man years. Can a smallish team outdo this in a couple of years? I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter how smart they are (Adobe hires smart people too). Developing programs like that takes time. If a Photoshop killer ever emerges, it will do so gradually. You will have plenty of time to notice. It will get incrementaly better as versions and years go by.

Core Image doesn’t buy a lot, anyway

If anything has contributed the most to the idea that a Photoshop killer is just around the corner, is Core Image. Or rather, a basic misunderstanding over what Core Image offers. You see, Core Image is not a magic box full of lego bricks to construct your own Photoshop. It’s an image processing and rendering framework. As such it is more akin to Photoshop filters. Problem is, while the filters are nice and all, they are not the really difficult part of making an image editor. After all, most of this stuff is already available in various programming libraries such as ImageMagick or the GIMP libraries. Core Image puts it at your immediate disposal and takes advantage of hardware acceleration, which is nice, but there is the rest 90% of the work to be done.

Check the latest crop of OS X image editing apps that leverage Core Image, such as Pixelmator and Acorn. They share the same basic filters, provide some basic editing tools, layers and that’s it. Nowhere near the power tool that Photoshop is. Some people might be fine with that. More power to them. Just don’t claim that those apps are anything close to a Photoshop killer.

It’s more than Photoshop

In the professional space, in order to compete with Photoshop you have to compete with it’s mighty friends too. How about seamless integration with Illustrator and InDesign? How about being able to fully read and display PSD files with all the bells and whistles? How about being able to run all those indispensable plug-ins and co-operate with third party tools designed to work with Photoshop?

The list goes on.

What I’m not claiming

I’m gonna be misunderstood, anyway, but here’s a quick list of what I’m not saying:

• I’m not saying that Photoshop is perfect
• I’m not saying that Pixelmator, Acorn et al are not fine programs
• I’m not saying that Pixelmator, Acorn et al don’t suit your needs
• I’m not saying that we don’t need some Photoshop competitor
• I’m not saying that we are never gonna see some Photoshop killer

To all the people trying to design a Photoshop killer: hang in there, fellas.

To all the users waiting for one: don’t hold your breath.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 3:39 pm.
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