Microsoft Goes Head-to-Head with Photoshop?

Aside from rumblings the Acrylic beta has lots of problems and runs very slowly, I'm extremely skeptical Microsoft will get anywhere with this application -at least with professional graphics people. They might have a shot with the hobbyist crowd, but that's going to be about it.

I've been doing computer graphics work since 1990 and seen a lot of people try to make a graphics app that could "do it all." Most have failed miserably or not been able to match the quality of better, more specialized apps.

If Microsoft means to challenge the supremacy of Photoshop, they need to challenge it with a pixel image editor that can do more things than Photoshop and deliver better results. They're not going to beat Photoshop by delivering some watered down pixel editor that tries to be a vector drawing application, web page building application and page layout application all in one.

All in one graphics apps get hit with the problem "Jack of all trades, king of none."

Microsoft also has an uphill battle from the fact Adobe has been in the desktop publishing thing from the very beginning. They have very mature products that are firmly entrenched in professional workflows.

To unseat Photoshop is as difficult as to unseat MS Office. Photoshop is used by so many that it has already built a kind of giantic infrastructure. Microsoft has two weapons against Adobe: Cash and Windows. Its Internet Explorer may or may not help. Adobe has its graphic design fleet---Illustrator, PageMaker, etc.

It's pretty unbelievable that a company, which had only the very feature-limited Paint program, create a program to crunch Photoshop.

Expression was an awesome program, but no competitor to Photoshop. If it competes with anything, it would be Illustrator.

Whether Acrylic has been extended enough to compete with Photoshop... I doubt it.

I hope they do a Mac version as Expression did.

It'll never replace Photoshop for one very good reason - Photoshop is just about perfect. It's the ultimate example of how a program should evolve; new features aren't just bloatware (office anyone?) but are genuinely useful and old ones have been polished to perfection. And as for workflow and interface - smooth as an oiled ferret!
Which other program generates such genuine excitement when a new version is about to be released? Not MS Word, that's for sure.
I just can't believe Microsoft, even using a bought-in product, will be anywhere close to Photoshop's brilliance. In reality what they'll do is add a patronising interface complete with a million wizards, and so many buttons and icons that the actual workspace will almost disappear, just like they?ve done with every bit of software they've ever released, including windows itself.
On top of that it will of course be interminably slow and hideously buggy

Bottom line - they haven't got a hope

Microsoft once created a product designed to compete with Flash. Does anyone remember what it was called?

I think Bruce B. hit the nail PROPERLY on the head; Microsoft doesn't intend to compete against Photoshop with Acrylic (I don't "follow the graphics software space" and I can see that). So this is no warning shot toward Adobe, at least not toward Photoshop, though MS might try to move it into Photoshop's airspace down the road. Right now, it's more of a CorelDraw or perhaps Illustrator competitor. Comparing it to Photoshop, or trying to defend Photoshop against it, reflects a misunderstanding of what the program is at this point.
Now, it'd pay to be realistic here; while all streaks eventually end, MS has an enviable track record that should not be brushed off lightly, To date, EVERY program, no matter how well entrenched, that they have targeted, they have overcome. Of course, in time past, they didn't have the reputation they have today, so hopefully those days are gone. Still, I wouldn't open my mouth too widely with these predictions of Acrylic's doom.

Photoshop is eponymous. To digitally alter an image is to Photoshop it, much like "googling" for information, or "ebaying" something off.

This doesn't mean that Microsoft can't compete with them (see: Xerox), but they have an uphill battle.

I know-- they can bundle it with Windows, calling it integral to the operating system.

Does anyone remember Microsoft's Movie Maker? That thing copied iMovie as closely as it could and was still completely useless for anything other than simply sequencing clips (which was still a challenge to figure out for yourself). I'm sure this new thing will sit in the same folder as Movie Maker and Paint and only ever be used by very low-end people who think Word-Art looks good.

As for Adobe, the only market they ever lost was video. Premiere was the only thing on the market at one time and they let Final Cut Pro advance beyond them too quickly. After Effects is still preferred over Motion and screenshots have shown it being used in Star Wars films alongside with Photoshop. Acrobat reader is slow to load on both platforms, a Windows equivalent of Preview would be nice just to speed things up.

People!
Who said the product is competing with Photoshop?

That's right. The press. The same press seeking readers through untrue headlines.

This is great! I hope they sell it for $99 and tell Adobe where to go. Wintel machines have steadily increased in to design houses and prepress facilities becuase they are cheap, just like owners. Piss off Adobe and they will respond (like cancelling Audiition on the mac). Then wintel will be an island again, which is how they like it. This won't get to version 3 before it becomes the mac paint of the windows world and bundled free with windows in 2010 when Longhorn comes out.

If Microsoft were to bundle the application into Windows, that doesn't mean graphics professionals would bother using it. Even users of CorelDRAW are pretty loyal to the CDR format. Illustrator seems to be the only one able to get any Corel users to jump ship.

Expression had some promise nearly a decade ago when the Fractal Design company launched it. At the time, it was positioned as a specialty vector program to use alongside Illustrator or CorelDRAW. Fractal Design tried using the popularity of the Painter program to market it. Even with those credentials, Expression seemed to go nowhere. Other decent vector editors have struggled to gain widespread popularity as well. Canvas and Xara are notable examples.

Flash is really the only vector graphics program developed in recent years that was able to carve out a space in the graphics marketplace on its own. The only reason why it succeeded was that it did things no other graphics application could do.

And that's the only way Microsoft will gain a foothold in the professional graphics marketplace as well. They have to come up with something new and unique. Microsoft won't succeed by marketing applications that copy the features of apps that have had a 15 to 18 year developmental head start.

Have you read the terrible reviews?
http://blog.thetechgurus.net/?p=27

The one big diference between Photoshop and Acrylic, is that Acrylic also incorporates vector editing. Photoshop wouldn't be considered a direct competitor in this area.

JimmyJames- I agree.
This program will suck, plain & simple.

It is not just Adobe you are competing with...
90% of creative pros use a Mac, and for good reason.

Toulinwoek: every program?
Have you heard of google? or iTunes? please...

Ha ha ha.... microsoft and graphics in the same line!!

come on does any body really use microsoft programmes because they want to.. or because they have to?

Man... who said that this was intended to be a Photoshop competitor? Just like Metro is supposedly an Acrobat competitor? Sorry, wrong on both accounts. Microsoft decides to overhaul its Windows printing subsystem, and automatically the headline-chasing tech media outlets find a way to play it up as a new "Microsoft vs. xxxx" blurb. Just like InfoPath was an Acrobat killer--yeah, right. Why don't you folks dig a little deeper than the simple headlines and superficial details? This is sensationalist journalism at best. Sad.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the GIMP! Open source (ie free!) and great Photoshop-type features sufficient for most end users...

Pretty good point about The Gimp. I advise most amateurs and hobbyists to use that than playing computer roulette trying to download illegal cracked versions of Photoshop. Downloading warez is a great way to get your PC infected with malware.

Anonymous said:
"The one big diference between Photoshop and Acrylic, is that Acrylic also incorporates vector editing. Photoshop wouldn't be considered a direct competitor in this area."

Photoshop actually has some basic, but pretty functional, vector editing tools for developing clipping paths, shape layers and other paths for developing selections. Photoshop can also bring in vector paths via the clipboard from Illustrator and Freehand. The paths can be used as shape layers, designated as clipping paths to knock out backgrounds or be used to generate highly precise selections.

Even if Microsoft marries a vector app and raster app together in one application (seen others like Canvas already do that), I'll still be using Photoshop and Illustrator together and generating better results.

I love acrylic...it makes photoshop look pathetic

I Don't know who "Steve" is, but after using Acrylic for a week or two I am amazed. The program is so utterly useless that it doesn't even know what to do with itslef. It took me four days to get used to using Photoshop after switching form Paint Shop, so I know it can be difficult getting used to a new program, but this was more than a minor inconvienience. Photoshop has taken years to evolve into what it is now, and I really don't think that some half-assed immitation (if you can even call it that -- it's a compliment) can provide enough competition to throw of the great P.S. It's like taking Illustrator and PS, removing all but the most basic tools, and combining them into one cluttered interface. Wow. Acrylic is the the MS Paint of the design world, and unless Microsoft can perform some major surgery it will probably stay like that. Don't worry about Adobe's Photoshop, if you need to, worry about why Microsoft has taken an extra two to three years to make an operating system Apple has already had since 2000.

I don't think they're trying to "target" Photoshop.

I think their main aim might be to simply offer bundled within windows a program that actually does some image editing (in contrast to the pretty horrible PAINT).

I think they may be getting nervous (well not nervous, maybe concerned ... pro-active at least) about Mac's bundled software which provides programs that are useful for most anything you need and you don't HAVE TO go running to a million third party programs (like i and most PC users do).

I don't use any of the bundled windows programs for instance except wordpad which is a program they couldn't screw up (not media player, their picture viewer etc). If they're not offering any useful programs for editing digital photos etc. it's going to make them vulnerable.

I haven't tried the program, i'm sure it's awful, but this is (it seems to me) their intent.

*Sigh* to mrw0lf...

Please ... Google and iTunes are not programs; they are services, and even if they ought to have been included/considered, you needn't be so literal-minded to understand the overall point. But for your sake, let me rephrase:
To date, JUST ABOUT every program, no matter how well entrenched, that they (MS) have targeted, they have overcome.

Now, I actually got your point about the Mac, even though a literal-minded person would probably ask about your source for a statistic indicating that 90% of "creative pros" use a machine that has only 3% of the worldwide market. If that were true, I am pretty convinced that Adobe wouldn't waste the resources to port every one of their apps to the OS of choice for that other 10%.

I think most of the people are forgetting that its still in beta. And with the cash that Microsoft has, they can challenge Adobe.

Microsoft's Flash like program was called Liquid Motion.

If the examples, which look more like clip-art, are any indication of the type of work that users would be doing with Acrylic, then Photoshop is definitly not a competitor. Photoshop has improved greatly in the last few versions in terms of its painting tools, but that's a small facet of what Photoshop can do and Microsoft's little paint program will not knock Photoshop off the throne with painting tools alone.