Adobe’s Illustrator is a standard for creating graphics. Photoshop, with its open plug-in environment, is a standard for manipulating imagery both for print and the Web. Premiere is an intriguing, if not quite standard way of animating graphics.
Given these three products, it’s no surprise that Adobe’s drive to be the engine behind Web pages (discussed here http://cgi.chicago.tribune.com/tech/frontpage/0,1714,5,00.html last week) is equaled by the company’s attempt to rule the world of Web images, too. Adobe’s background is in presenting complex images through PostScript. Can the company’s big, super sharp images be reproduced in a low-bandwidth environment?
In addition to software, Adobe (www.adobestudios.com/) sells images over the Net, competing with companies such as (www.photodisc.com/index.asp) PhotoDisc. Most of those images are intended for bandwidth-irrelevant environments, although the company has begun including 72-dpi versions of each image that are reasonably Web-ready.
Clip art can be a very good business, but it’s not Adobe’s core venture. For Web designers, the company’s strength is Photoshop. Its current version 4 – version 5 is reportedly due next month – lets designers save files in GIF89 format, optimized for the Web, but some designers we consulted for this report said the company needs to offer a Photoshop customized for the Web.
“It should be no big deal,” said one. “They already have a stripped-down version they bundle with some of their other programs. I love Photoshop, but I design Web graphics and nothing else all day. I simply don’t need about 80 percent of what Photoshop gives me. I’m the guy who buys Word and then realizes that TextPad or BBEdit are all he needs.”
“Why bring a trunk full of tools to a job when all you need is a Swiss Army Knife?” quipped another.
One of Adobe’s competitors appears to have noted this opportunity. Macromedia has just released a preview version of (www.macromedia.com/software/fireworks/) Fireworks, a relatively compact Web-graphics editing package that, in initial testing, appears to dovetail nicely with the company’s Dreamweaver and Flash programs.
“I’ve only had Fireworks for a couple of days,” said the chief designer of a major New York-based Web agency. “But I’m using it for production already. I’ll stick by Photoshop ’til I die for CD-ROM work, but Fireworks looks like a quick, easy way to get the idea for an image out of my head and onto a page. I know there’s a new version of Photoshop coming soon. I hope it’s more focused on speed than new features. That’s what plug-ins are for.”
Are you using Adobe Photoshop for Web images? We want to know (specialreport@vineyard.com).
