Adobe buy Pixmantec

[jdyke]

Just heard that Adobe have bought Pixmantec.  

Although I am a Photoshop user I am also a user of RSP which is a very good raw converter.  

I am interested in Lightroom but like the rest of the Windows community are still waiting for this long overdue beta edition.  

As a result I bought RSP and to be honest quite like the product.  

So what now happens to all of us RSP users?  No more product updates or bug fixes.

From what I am hearing they are going to encoperate some of the RSP feautres into Lightroom.  Sounds nice - but lets be honest about this.  Adobe are not likely to give any discount to Pixmantec users and Lightroom (which I know is a much bigger product) is going to retail for more than 5 times the amount of RSP! (and probably even more in the UK)  

RSP has come out as one of the top converters in many UK and US magazines recently so a lot of users have recently bought it as a result .

Competition is important as it keeps companies sharp and ahead of the game so buying out the compeition in my opinion is always a very bad thing.
Who's next? Bibble and Irident Digital (raw developer)?


 

Rant over

JD

[rdonson]

Competition is important as it keeps companies sharp and ahead of the game so buying out the compeition in my opinion is always a very bad thing.

Can't wait to hear your rant about why you've invested in Windoze.  

[DarkPenguin]

Can't wait to hear your rant about why you've invested in Windoze. 
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OS/2 wasn't viable.

[rdonson]

OS/2 wasn't viable.
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   OS/2 still runs most ATMs and will for another year or two.  Think about that next time you put your plastic in for cash.  

[paulbk]

This from Pixmantec site link:

Q: Why has Adobe acquired Pixmantec?
A: One of the great advantages of working with raw images is that, as the technology for raw processing continues to improve, the quality you can bring out of even your older images continues to improve as well. It is for this reason that Adobe continues to invest in our own raw processing technology. The acquisition of Pixmantec will allow Adobe to accelerate our rate of improvement and sets us up to deliver the world’s best raw processing solutions. Combining the best of Adobe’s existing raw technology with the best of Pixmantec’s technology will deliver noticeable improvements to photographers. More importantly, the expertise of Pixmantec founders Kenneth Tang Laerke and Michael Jonsson—developed through their work creating the RawShooter products as well as through their work on Capture One software—will be a great complement to our own expertise and promises substantial technology advances in the future.

Q: What are the plans for the RawShooter line of products?
A: The RawShooter | Premium product will be taken off the market as soon as existing obligations with distribution partners are fulfilled. Special pricing that will make it easier for RawShooter | Premium customers to migrate to other Adobe products will be announced shortly. The free RawShooter | Essentials product will remain available as a download from the Adobe Web site until shortly after Lightroom 1.0 is released as a shipping product.

Q: Why does Adobe plan to discontinue the RawShooter products?
A: Pixmantec has strong technology which has significant value for making Adobe’s own raw processing solutions better. Adobe already offers multiple workflows for processing raw images. The new Adobe Lightroom software—currently in public beta for Mac and soon available for Windows—provides a photography-centric environment that will handle the full workflow from import, sorting, developing, and storage, through to presentation and output. The Raw Shooter products do not offer any significant functionality that is not already, or will not be shortly, offered in Lightroom, so continuing this product line would only cause confusion for our customers.

Q: What level of support will Adobe provide for existing RawShooter customers?
A: Pixmantec’s primary customer support offering has been an online forum where customers can post questions to be answered by other customers or by Pixmantec staff. We will migrate these forums to the user-to-user forums on Adobe.com, located at http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/.

[jdyke]

Can't wait to hear your rant about why you've invested in Windoze. 
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Ron - I don't wish to start yet another Mac v Win debate, both have their plus and minus points.   I am a Windows user..unless you want to loan me the vast sum of cash to migrate then I shall stay a Windows user.  

And if you think my 'rant' is bad go and check out the Pixmantec forums - it not pretty over there.....  
The questions on the site do answer some of my questions and I have no reason to belive that this won't happen.  

Please don't get me wrong, I am actually an Adobe fan and accept that business acqusition does happen sometimes for the right reasons.

But to use an Analogy:-

Nice Mr Adobe came along in January and showed us this new Cherry Pie he baked.  He said 'I can't give you the pie yet but I can give you a slice so that you can tell me what it tastes like.'  'But I am only going to give a slice to Mac users at the moment as the Windows pie is not ready'  

Ok - bit of a bummer but no big deal.  

Windows users in the mean time decide to try some other pies available, the apple pie is quite nice. Then along comes Mr Adobe again and says 'Sorry but we now own the apple pie and you can't have any more of it'  'Oh and sorry but  the Cherry pie still isn't quite baked yet for you Windows users so you will have to go hungry for a while'

At the end of the day as I am not cross with Adobe for buing Pixmantec it's just the timing sort of sucks!  

Guess I will continue to wait patiently like the rest.

JD

[dlashier]

> OS/2 wasn't viable.

OS/2 was excellent and way ahead of its time. IBM just bungled the marketing and iirc Microsoft pulled a fast one on them too.

> check out the Pixmantec forums - it not pretty over there

Yeah, the juvenile rantings are reminiscent of the furor over P1's bungling policies on C1. Face it, $100 is pocket change these days, barely a good dinner out (with wine) for two. I've got a shelf full of $100 sw that never got used because when examined in detail it didn't meet my needs. RSP at least will still work for you until you buy your next unsupported camera. But still, I sympathize with those who just bought RSP recently expecting ongoing updates - perhaps Adobe should give extra consideration to them.

But all in all I am very happy for Michael J that he was able to cash in on his talent. And it was a smart move on Adobe's part to "fix" the crude underpinnings of their raw conversion. Meanwhile they fooled a lot of folks who didn't do critical evaluations. After V2 came out even their "evangelists" admitted that V1 was a disaster, but V2 did little more than gloss over the core problems by imposing a default color noise filter. Now perhaps we'll finally see some quality raw conversions come out of Adobe software.

- DL

[rvanr]

Special pricing that will make it easier for RawShooter | Premium customers to migrate to other Adobe products will be announced shortly.

I have used the Premium edition for a while now and like it very much. So I am sorry that it will not be maintained as a relatively cheap separate product.   Receiving a substantial discount on Lightroom might make this pill a bit less bitter to swallow (assuming that that is the correct reading of the above quote from the Pixmantec site.)  

[rdonson]

Sorry, JD, I just meant it as a tease.  I hope you didn't take offense.

Windows, Mac, Linux, OS/400, z/OS, AIX, etc - I don't get religious with them.  I just use them to get work done.

Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom do have my interest though I haven't used either.  

Hopefully it won't be a long wait for the Win beta of Lightroom.  I've seen shots of it running posted by Schewe and Reichmann so I've got my fingers crossed.

[narikin]

Can't wait to hear your rant about why you've invested in Windoze.

oh, please grow up.

There are dozens of reasons to use a Windows machine including the fact that they have the fastest processors out there - even apple admits in now and has given up pretending otherwise. Or perhaps the fact that you can have a 7Tb Raid subsytem inside your desktop case for under $3000 rather than give Apple $13,000 for an overpriced x-raid is also a pretty good reason. Apple's image is a business model, nothing more, and though they like to pretend its something bigger than that, thats what it is.

I thought we were beyond such silliness.

[rdonson]

Take a deep breath and relax.  It was meant as a good natured tease.

[jani]

Nice Mr Adobe came along in January and showed us this new Cherry Pie he baked.  He said 'I can't give you the pie yet but I can give you a slice so that you can tell me what it tastes like.'  'But I am only going to give a slice to Mac users at the moment as the Windows pie is not ready'

To top it off, the very same company isn't ready with a universal binary version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements until 2007 (February, I believe). So if you want both Lightroom beta and Photoshop CS2, you'll have to spend lots of money on what's essentially a dead platform.

It's hilarious.  

Let's face it; companies are no smarter than the IQ of the smartest person working there divided by the number of managers.