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I'd like to believe there is a market need for a cheap Photoshop Light. $99 or something low for a version of Photoshop that has 90% of the features removed.

I'd like to believe there is a market need for a cheap Photoshop Light. $99 or something low for a version of Photoshop that has 90% of the features removed. Just the most basic ones for the average user left in. I get the sense that most people who pirate Photoshop and make the rest of us endure the terrible DRM are only pirating the $600 piece of software to rotate and crop images because nothing else is out there.

theallan 14y ago
That's the corner of the market that Photoshop Elements ( http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html ) is targeting is it not? $99 as you suggest!
- pkmays 14y ago
  Photoshop Elements is actually a totally different product. Someone who's very comfortable with the Photoshop workflow might not like Elements at all. There actually was a Photoshop Light: Photoshop LE. I got a free copy of Photoshop 5.5 LE along with a Wacom tablet. It really was a stripped down Photoshop. Imagine someone had sprinkled #ifdef PHOTOSHOP_LE everywhere and then said "Ship it!" It was nearly the perfect product for me. The only really annoying limitation was working with a single step of undo/redo. I taught me to be very deliberate with my brush strokes. :D
  - philwelch 14y ago
    > Imagine someone had sprinkled #ifdef PHOTOSHOP_LE everywhere and then said "Ship it!" This is a surprisingly common strategy for shrinkwrapped software. I interviewed at Chief Architect once. (http://www.chiefarchitect.com/ http://www.chiefarchitect.com/). They have one codebase. They have about a dozen products overall though, which are all selective builds of the same codebase. Now instead of just selling $2000 software to professionals, they can sell $60-$600 software to hobbyists. Kind of funny thinking about how much money the humble #ifdef has made the software industry, eh?
TorbjornLunde 14y ago
Pixelmator, Acorn, GIMP and Paint.NET does pretty much this. Pixelmator has a UI that rivals Photoshop in many areas.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  I haven't tried Pixelmator or Acorn, but GIMP and Paint.Net are not very good. They're ok for totally free, but are a pain in the ass to use or missing some fairly obvious things (e.g. being able to set the radius of a rounded corner in Paint.Net). And I say that as someone who rarely uses them, I can't imagine how annoying they are for proper designers.

theallan 14y ago

That's the corner of the market that Photoshop Elements ( http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html ) is targeting is it not? $99 as you suggest!

pkmays 14y ago
Photoshop Elements is actually a totally different product. Someone who's very comfortable with the Photoshop workflow might not like Elements at all. There actually was a Photoshop Light: Photoshop LE. I got a free copy of Photoshop 5.5 LE along with a Wacom tablet. It really was a stripped down Photoshop. Imagine someone had sprinkled #ifdef PHOTOSHOP_LE everywhere and then said "Ship it!" It was nearly the perfect product for me. The only really annoying limitation was working with a single step of undo/redo. I taught me to be very deliberate with my brush strokes. :D
- philwelch 14y ago
  > Imagine someone had sprinkled #ifdef PHOTOSHOP_LE everywhere and then said "Ship it!" This is a surprisingly common strategy for shrinkwrapped software. I interviewed at Chief Architect once. (http://www.chiefarchitect.com/ http://www.chiefarchitect.com/). They have one codebase. They have about a dozen products overall though, which are all selective builds of the same codebase. Now instead of just selling $2000 software to professionals, they can sell $60-$600 software to hobbyists. Kind of funny thinking about how much money the humble #ifdef has made the software industry, eh?

TorbjornLunde 14y ago

Pixelmator, Acorn, GIMP and Paint.NET does pretty much this. Pixelmator has a UI that rivals Photoshop in many areas.

mattmanser 14y ago
I haven't tried Pixelmator or Acorn, but GIMP and Paint.Net are not very good. They're ok for totally free, but are a pain in the ass to use or missing some fairly obvious things (e.g. being able to set the radius of a rounded corner in Paint.Net). And I say that as someone who rarely uses them, I can't imagine how annoying they are for proper designers.