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Author Topic: A riff on Jeff's "If Thomas..."  (Read 1478 times)

John Camp

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A riff on Jeff's "If Thomas..."
« on: May 14, 2013, 04:33:22 pm »

Everything I know about software development could be written on the back of a postage stamp, so this question (and comments) may seem foolish to those among you who are more knowledgeable.

Would it be possible for Thomas (or somebody) to relatively quickly write a piece of "architecture" without much content, but that would integrate seamlessly with LR, with Adobe providing a developer package that would guide independent plug-in developers? What I'm thinking is that if Adobe were actually concerned about those customers it seems prepared to drop (i.e. hobbyists, artists and semi-pros) perhaps they would be willing to write and sell a basic program that would set up a standard for outsiders to provide the plugins for whatever additional capability that LR would need. So you could plug in any additional tools that you need (like layers, or soft-proofing, or a simple compositing program) and perhaps camera companies could plug in translators for their cameras as new cameras arrive, and so on. Adobe could even sell the tools in an iTunes-type facility. I don't think this would hurt Adobe much, as a full set of tools (if they should ever become available) would probably cost more than a Photoshop subscription, and it would allow Adobe to service, sell-to and keep in touch with people who are moving from being small users to becoming power users who'd buy into the full Creative Suite.

Or is that simply impractical or impossible?

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Schewe

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Re: A riff on Jeff's "If Thomas..."
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2013, 04:50:56 pm »

Well, Lightroom already has a 3rd party SDK which is being used by companies like OnOne, Photomatrix, X-Rite, etc for doing stuff in Lightroom and sending it external for processing and bringing it back in. So, Lightroom is already ripe for that. Some 3rd party developer could already do this.

But, would Adobe bend over backwards and encourage a 3rd party to come in and take over what used to be Adobe customers for Photoshop? I doubt it. There's a higher likelihood they would do something internal. Something that fell between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CC. Which is what the previous thread was about.
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bill t.

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Re: A riff on Jeff's "If Thomas..."
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2013, 05:06:02 pm »

I would hope than anything like that would remain purely in the open source realm, from start to finish.  The sort of framework you describe is not a difficult task per se, and in fact current programming tools are quite good at whipping up such frameworks quickly.  I'm sure there are existing examples.  It's the algorithms in the plug-ins themselves that are important.  It would unfortunate to saddle them with any kind of obligation to a big, commercial developer as the price of a being handed a simple framework with a big name on it.

But honestly, it's a doomed idea.  You'd probably just get Gimp again!  
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