Noel Carboni wrote: Sure, there are a few existing programs out there that seem to represent a start in the right direction... Paintshop Pro, Gimp... But even starting with them - and don't kid yourself, that approach would have its own problems - it would take a kings ransom and significant time to develop and deliver a true Photoshop replacement. If those things could reasonably eat Adobe's lunch, don't you think they would have done so by now? Going back a few years...there was a time that Photoshop (in the v3, v4 time frame) had competition...there was Live Picture (which was pretty cool) and Xres, Paintshop Pro, Painter, Corel's offering...but Photoshop simply out developed the competition to the point that any real competitor fell to the side. There were a couple of really big companies that sniffed around the edges…Quark at one point was gonna do a Photoshop-Killer. But it died before being released. MSFT, that had Digital Image Suite, toyed with doing a head to head Photoshop competitor, but MSFT knew that developing a cross platform Photoshop-Killer would be very, very expensive and unlikely to be "better" than Photoshop. Photoshop's only real competitor now is previous versions of itself. Adobe tried to address that with the 3 version back upgrade policy which was changed to the 1 version back and now the subscription only upgrade. I don't have a magic ball handy, but I suspect Photoshop CC will be pretty successful and f Adobe comes through with the promise of new features on a continual basis, likely to get over the hump and attract former users that thought they would never subscribe…I also think the sales of Photoshop CS6 is gnu spike high because it'll be the last perpetual version. So, that's the choice, go to a considerably less robust app, stick with CS6 till it gets mold and dies or go subscription. A lot of my fiends have taken up Adobe on the $9.99/month upgrade for the next year to test out the waters of the subscription model (could most have already upgraded to CS6 as a fall back in case they drop the subscription next your :~)
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