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"The technology assets of Pixmantec ApS have been acquired by Adobe"

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Andrew Rodney said:
This is all speculation on my part, that said....

Unless this deal was in the works for a LONG time, I doubt you'll see the fruits of the software in version 1 since it has been said publicly by the LR team they hope to have the first version out before the end of this year. In my mind, that means RSP technology will likely be a version 2.0 reality OR Adobe purchased them to kill the competition.

Stepping back the the SSE instruction set and Fat Binaries (or whatever Apple is calling them with this CPU architecture change) it may be a 2.0 so LR can support the Power architecture chips in 1.0 and drop it in 2.0. And AFAIK and have heard, it is the SSE instruction set (Altivec on x86) that make RSE/RSP fast.

more speculation,

Sean
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Daniel Harrison said:
but I don't see it as a good thing. Is there no competition anywhere???? I guess the best thing to do is sell up RSP and portfolio and get lightroom when it arrives. It really was a great program, kinda sad to see it die like that.

Adobe is planning to give a good upgrade path the RSP owners, so think twice before you sell your RSP.
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Dierk Haasis said:
That explains a lot about developments during the past few weeks. And it leaves us with some highly interesting questions:

1. Will Corel still bundle RS|e?
2. Since Lightroom originally was built around ACR - will LR Windows beta still be coming this side of New Year's Eve?
3. Will ACR eventually be completely scrapped for the superior RS|P?
4. How good will the upgrade path from RS|P to LR be?
5. What about the features in the making, the ones many users of RS|P asked for and where probably really be worked on?

Well, Adobe did acquire lots of technology, companies and products in the past and did come up with superior sw from it (example: CoolEdit Pro -> Audition 1.5/2)

1 - As Far as I know.
2 - Windows Preview version of LR is tentatively planned for this summer AFAIK. Will be same feature set as Mac at release of official version.
3 - No. The plan is synergy between ACR and RSP technologies. I suspect that the UI will be LR, and the ACR RAW engine will change somewhat under the hood to accommodate RSP technologies where they would yield improvements over the current ACR engine. SYNERGY between the 2.
4 - What Adobe is discussing internally seems fair to me. I think RSP users will split on their opinion, but i would feel that way no matter what Adobe does.
5 - Many of those are already in LR. The question is a bit vague, but even if you got specific, I would not know the answer.

Hope that this helps..
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
scott kirkpatrick said:
What's your perspective (inside, outside, or roadside) on this?

scott

Check out my response to the other posts and also at Pixmantec. Also some of my perspective I will keep to myself. In general, I am happy for Pixmantec, and I think Lightroom will be a better product for it, and in the end we all win because RSP R&D can do more at LR then they could in their limited resource base of Pixmantec. obviously communications should have been better.
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Tom Henkel said:
The big question is how will the Pixmantec technology re-emerge in Adobe products? Incorporated into a future version of PS? Another addition to Creative Suite? And how well integrated will it be.
Tom

The RSP technology will be merged into the ACR RAW engine and appear in both Lightroom and CS3. At least that is the best I can deduct from my discussions with Adobe. of course all of this is new and subject to change, but I believe that the desire is to take the best of RSP algorithms and get into the ACR RAW engine ASAP. How much they can do before the release of Lightroom remains to be seen, but since the ACR engine is a separate component, it should not be too hard to offer it between major LR upgrades as they have done with ACR for PS. This is AFAIK, not the 100% gospel..
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Andrew Rodney said:
This is all speculation on my part, that said....

Unless this deal was in the works for a LONG time, I doubt you'll see the fruits of the software in version 1 since it has been said publicly by the LR team they hope to have the first version out before the end of this year. In my mind, that means RSP technology will likely be a version 2.0 reality OR Adobe purchased them to kill the competition.

Andrew,

I have spent a lot of time with Thomas and other Hi-level Adobe people this week, and I would say that based on my information and observations, you have this one wrong, but I understand why you say it..
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Sean DeMerchant said:
Stepping back the the SSE instruction set and Fat Binaries (or whatever Apple is calling them with this CPU architecture change) it may be a 2.0 so LR can support the Power architecture chips in 1.0 and drop it in 2.0. And AFAIK and have heard, it is the SSE instruction set (Altivec on x86) that make RSE/RSP fast.

more speculation,

Sean

Not totally sure of your point, but I can tell you that RSP is a speed demon on my MacBook Pro. It is the fastest Windows box that I own. Faster than my AMD 64 X2 dual core 4400+.
 

Tom Yi

New member
hey hey hey...
Looks like Michael finally got somewhat caught up with the avalanche of stuff happening at Pixmantec forum and all the dealings with Adobe to come back to this forum.

Nice to hear from you again. I wrote sent you a PM, but I'll reiterate a bit...

I really really really like RSE and RSP. I got into shooting RAW b/c of RSE. I think I've had every version of RSE till RSP came out and I remember asking Michael about when RSP will be released at dpr's forum and got it the first day it came out. What I really like about RSP besides the speed issue is that it's simple, effective, and cheap. The thought of buying books as thick as phone books and taking courses to learn CS2 send shivers up my spine. I've no time for that. What I want and like about RSP is that it keeps to the KISS method (keep it simple stupid).

For all of us that like and use RSP/RSE, it's not dead, yes it will not be upgraded any further, but it works just fine for the bodies we have and I guess when we upgrade bodies, then we'll have to decide at that point what to use for RAW conversion.

My only hope is that LR becomes more like RSP/RSE, cheap, fast, and highly effective too for working on RAW photos, first and foremost. I hope LR's extended capabilities to organize, do slide shows, print, have plug in's don't ruin the main purpose. To allow photogs to work on RAW images in a fast and effective way.

Arguably, PS was made more for digital graphic types first and was more or less adopted by photogs. LR will hopefully fix that, so that we photogs will have a product geared for us to work on RAW images.

I was saddened and upset like everyone else. Now that I've got my senses back. I'm hoping that LR will be what RSP was and a bit more, that it won't cost an arm and a leg, and that it'll be a speed demon as well.

Since you have Adobe and the inside folks ear, I'm hoping you can relay my feelings (I don't think I'm the only one with this feeling) to the folks developing LR.
Thanks
 
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Herb

New member
Seems that life today is one long round of spin and hype. Everything designed to further big business is dressed up as being solely for the good of the customer. Well, sorry, but the details of any upgrade path to Adobe don't interest me. People have used the words 'Adobe' and 'innovation' in the same sentence. Hello! Haven't you noticed? Monopoly suppliers are not strong on innovation. I supported RS mainly because it was written - allegedly - by creative, 'little' people. And supported by Michael who I used to think of as a little peoples champion. Well; I admit it - I was stupid and naive. But I'm not so stupid or naive as to bite hard on the bait for the 'upgrade path' to something that was declared the industry standard when it was released some years ago, yet seems to need constant improvement. Time to support Canon - they are, IMHO, the only company to have steadfastly resisted the bullying tactics of Adobe. DPP is easy to use, no Big Brother spyware activation and it's regarded as the top performer by the best guys we can hear from (at least we could hear until RG eradicated them from the face of the photo world).

I also must praise Andrew Rodney for his forthright statement on the true situation. Andrew is well connected, but this is not the first time when he has acknowledged the truth to customers while others spin a load of marketing BS for their own promotion. Probably wont help his bank account. But if he could bank respect, he'd be a millionaire.

Thanks Andrew.
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Herb,

You are of course entitled to your opinion, and clearly Adobe is a giant and will not become or act like a garage company ever. But also, behind a corporate entity are the people doing the work. And I can clearly say that at the people level, even pretty high up, all of their desires are to build the best product they can. Will it be as cheap or nimble as RSP...I would doubt it. How can it be when it has larger goals, and is cross platform, with an identical interface.

But to impugn the people, including myself, in your statement is not fair IMHO.

I am trying to help here, at no pay. If Adobe begins to pick up my tab, then I can help more. If not (and there is no promise) then I can help less. But I find your cynicism a bit harsh.

You are entitled to your opinion, and Andrew his, and me mine. But your implication that I have changed my stripes, is unfair. I am simply trying to make things as good as I can for the RSP users, presently at no gain for myself. I cannot do more than that.

And personally I like LR. I did before the acquisition and I do now. If I did not, I would say so and work with Adobe to improve it. Is it perfect.....no...just ask Adobe. They are the first to say so and are welcoming input to make it serve the needs of the Pro photographer community. While that may not match up perfectly with ALL of the users of RSP, well, life is not perfect.

After all, RSP was not the perfect program for the users of RSP. It was a great effort, working hard to catch up to all that it could be. Whether it could have made it or not, we will never know. But the owners had that dream, and had money come in from a different source, perhaps RSP might have continued. But the money came in this way, and I and the people at Pixmantec believe that more people can be served, by creating a synergy with Adobe, then struggling on their own.

Let's keep an open mind to see how this goes. That is what I am doing, and I am feeding back to Adobe as much as I can to make LR as good as it can be. Adobe has given all of us the opportunity to do this...now on Mac and in about 2 months (my guess) on Windows. The program is far from complete, so it it not too late to provide influence and direction. Of course in the end it will be Adobe who makes the decisions, and it will be our decision to buy or not.

JMHO YMMV
 

John_Nevill

New member
Michael,

I share your sentiments, but its been nearly a week since the Adobe acquisition of pixmantec and i've heard nothing as a customer from either of them regards continuity (excluding the "find it yourself "ambiguous pdf) and they do have customer details.

Ironically, I decided to leave the Pixmantec fourm as it started to lose its purpose, if you know what I mean?

BTW, I signed up for LR-W months ago, and its still vapourware. In contrast, I received an email from iView outlining support and a clear transition map within 24 hours of the deal.

Adobe's/Pixmantec's lack of direct communication is poor customer relations by any standard of the imagination, I suppose this ignorance of customers can be construed as insulting and is what triggers such heartfelt reactions.

I'm eagerly awaitng LR and will endeavour to feedback, I have no gripe against Adobe, so I'll go in with an open mind.

IMO, Adobe/Pixmantec should have kept the whole thing under wraps and tied the announcement into LR-W beta release. That may have been enough to allay / sweeten customers concerns.

Just my 2 cents!
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
John_Nevill said:
Michael,

I share your sentiments, but its been nearly a week since the Adobe acquisition of pixmantec and i've heard nothing as a customer from either of them ...

Adobe's/Pixmantec's lack of direct communication is poor customer relations by any standard of the imagination, I suppose this ignorance of customers can be construed as insulting and is what triggers such heartfelt reactions.

I'm eagerly awaitng LR and will endeavour to feedback, I have no gripe against Adobe, so I'll go in with an open mind.

I cannot disagree with any of the above.. I wish it had been handled better. For all of us :>)
 
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Dierk Haasis

pro member
Michael, could you try to keep us up-to-date here? The pixmantec forum is not at all a help anymore; I quit visiting for good with my last posts Tuesday.
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
Um...I like the ACR interface... Is it going to go? I had it worked down to a tee, nice and simple, I think there will be confusing days to come...
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
There is a lot of information at the Pixmantec site where I will continue to moderate on Adobe's behalf. Also Kevin Conner from Adobe made the following post yesterday (actually made a few)...

...originally posted on www.pixmantec.com on July 7, 2006.
As the head of product management for professional digital imaging at Adobe, let me give my apologies for not having provided more information to date on the acquisition. We have not communicated as well as we should have. I can assure you, however, that many of us at Adobe have been reading all of your concerns here and in other forums over the past two weeks, and we have also had many conversations with Michael Tapes to get his feedback. We are working hard to resolve issues and put the right plans in place for Pixmantec customers. We are still hammering out details on some things, however, so I'm afraid that I can't provide all of the answers that you might like just yet. What I can say is the following:

Whether any of you ever purchase another product from Adobe, you are now all Adobe customers in our eyes, and your satisfaction matters to us just as much as any other customer. We can't expect you to be happy about the fact that we're discontinuing the RawShooter products. What we can do, however, is make this transition as painless as possible. That means keeping this forum going as long as it's needed, providing an easy transition (both in cost and in workflow) to other products, and listening to all of your product concerns and requests.

Let me also state emphatically that the goal of this acquisition is not about taking another raw converter off the market. Our goal at Adobe is providing the best possible photography solutions, and we recognized the ability of the Pixmantec team to help us do that. The discontinuation of RawShooter is just an unfortunate byproduct of that decision. While you may not feel today that this decision was the best thing for Pixmantec customers, our goal is that one or two years from now, as you enjoy the fruits of this partnership, you do feel that way.

Thanks for your passion and your patience, and please stay tuned...

- Kevin Connor

--------------------
Sr. Dir. of Product Management, Adobe
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Ben Rubinstein said:
Um...I like the ACR interface... Is it going to go? I had it worked down to a tee, nice and simple, I think there will be confusing days to come...

My understanding is the following....

The "ACR" interface (updated of course as each release is) will remain in Photoshop CS3 due to be released in Spring, last I heard.

The "Lightroom" interface, is quite different, and is still in development, as is CS3.

The underlying RAW conversion engine shares the identical code for both applications, but is driven by different UI implementations for each product. I have seen Thomas Knoll publicly discuss that the next ACR might move toward what you now see in the Lightroom beta. Clearly they have announced that the Adjustments from ACR and Lightroom will be interchangeable, regardless of which interface is used at any time in the process. At least that is their stated goal.
 

Diane Fields

New member
Michael Tapes said:
There is a lot of information at the Pixmantec site where I will continue to moderate on Adobe's behalf. Also Kevin Conner from Adobe made the following post yesterday (actually made a few)...

Interesting. I've stopped going to the Pixmantec forum because it seemed primarily just to be rants about being cheated, etc. so I'm glad you posted this here---and I may check it out this morning just to see what's what. (in reference to you noting that other Adobe folks have visited).

I do plan to try the LR beta--and since I'm a heavy user of PS, I have few qualms about trying yet another Adobe product. I'm rather in a quandary right now--I've been a user of RSP and C1LE primarily for a good while. I have other RCs on my harddrive, but am not 'in love' with them---even tried Canon's 2 (DPP and the upgrade for Zoombrowser last night--just not enough control for me--among other things). I guess, after watching the LR videos several times, I'm wondering whether LR will be enough--or too much LOL. I can't imagine not going into PS to continue since I also use masks and layers quite a lot--plus I prefer my own mono processing. So--its sort of a wait and see thing for me--though I'd rather be using the RC I will be using primarily in the futures than be out here in 'undecided' land. Hopefully, the Win LR beta isn't too far down the road.

Diane
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Diane,

Always good to hear from you!

To the best of my knowledge...

1 - Windows LR is 6-8 weeks away (could be more or less of course)

2 - B/W capabilities in LR are excellent.

3 - There is open discussion that local adjustment might at some point make it to LR (don't look for it in V1.0)

4 - I believe that the design goal for LR is to be "just enough" so that you can go from ingest to print without having to leave LR. I do not think it will make it all the way there in V1.0, but I think I see the future :>)

The tone at the Pixmantec site has calmed down, and there is constructive discussion and suggestions going on. And I am confident that it will be the site of record for Adobe to make their posts that will be of interest to RSP users. of course there may be mailing or public press releases as well. They have a lot to announce, to tie up the loose ends of the acquisition announcement, so I am sure that we will see additional info from Pixmantec and Adobe shortly.

For me, I am sticking with RSP until their is reason to change. Right now I see those reasons being an official release of Lightroom, or my acquisition of a new camera that is not supported by RSP/CE.
 
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Dierk Haasis

pro member
Well, good to hear that pixmantec's forum begins to wind down. Still waiting before I go back. Since Adobe has their own Web forum, which is available via Usenet, too, have you any idea when [not if, that's a given] Adobe will incorporate the pixmantec forum into their site? I guess it will be folded into the Windows LR one.

Curiously - and I am happy to be a supporter of OpenRAW - Nikons' latest announcements concerning the D2xs may end my stint with RSP prematurely. Not that I get me an 's' but I will surely fetch the firmware update for my D2x, and it could well be this update will give me the "new" NEF format Nikon announced for the D2xs - incompatible with all RAW converters.*


*I don't consider PictureProject a RAW converter.
 

Diane Fields

New member
Michael Tapes said:
Diane,

Always good to hear from you!

To the best of my knowledge...

1 - Windows LR is 4-8 weeks away (could be more or less of course)

2 - B/W capabilities in LR are excellent.

3 - There is open discussion that local adjustment might at some point make it to LR (don't look for it in V1.0)

4 - I believe that the design goal for LR is to be "just enough" so that you can go from ingest to print without having to leave LR. I do not think it will make it all the way there in V1.0, but I think I see the future :>)

The tone at the Pixmantec site has calmed down, and there is constructive discussion and suggestions going on. And I am confident that it will be the site of record for Adobe to make their posts that will be of interest to RSP users. of course there may be mailing or public press releases as well. They have a lot to announce, to tie up the loose ends of the acquisition announcement, so I am sure that we will see additional info from Pixmantec and Adobe shortly.

For me, I am sticking with RSP until their is reason to change. Right now I see those reasons being an official release of Lightroom, or my acquisition of a new camera that is not supported by RSP/CE.

That sounds promising. I did understand that there is b/w processing in LR, so we'll see on that. I can understand that everything certainly won't make it all the way in v1.0--but, if I like the workflow, I can stick around. At the moment, I'm using RSP totally--I still like it a lot for my work.

I'll check back at the Pixmantec site just to keep up on what's occuring with Adobe on that front.

Thanks, Diane
 
Michael Tapes said:
4 - I believe that the design goal for LR is to be "just enough" so that you can go from ingest to print without having to leave LR.
Does/will LR support print-to-file with user selectable printer profiles?
 

Rob.Martin

New member
Speed, the need for......

For me, speed is of the essence. I mean there are trade offs, but I need to understand them.

I have dual core hardware, PC and Mac.

C1 - nice on both
LR - slow on 17" MacBookPro (have another GB RAM on desk now to see if this helps...)
Aperture - ugh, slow as swimming through toffee.... again on the macbookpro

I never used RawShooter, have too many RAw converters, but I keep hearing how zippy it was.

C1 does if for me at present. Hopefully the nice UI of the Adobe Products get's up to my kinda speed.... Thomas.... speed baby speed.... just like tracking them Leopards down!!!

Cheers


Rob
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Rob.Martin said:
C1 - nice on both
LR - slow on 17" MacBookPro (have another GB RAM on desk now to see if this helps...)
Aperture - ugh, slow as swimming through toffee.... again on the macbookpro

Well, LR hasn't been code-optimised, yet, they have not even closed down for new features. C1, OTOH, is been around a while, tried and tested and optimised. Aperture ... it is sold as a final version, so, it should be tried, tested and optimised ...
 

Don Lashier

New member
Dierk Haasis said:
C1, OTOH, is been around a while, tried and tested and optimised.

C1 has been lightning fast from day one. The sad fact is that very few programmers know how to code efficiently. Michael Jonson (author of both C1 and RSP) is obviously one of those few.

The other sad fact is that unless proper consideration is given to fundamental design at an early stage, attempts at optimization are at best band-aids. I recall a case a number of years ago where a university called me in to speed up a network optimization program one of their profs had written. We had a one hour meeting where he outlined the algorithm he was using, and I said "fine, I'll get to work on it". He said "don't you want a copy of my code?". I said "no, it's obviously useless and I want to start from scratch so as not to get off on the wrong track". A month later I delivered a program that performed the same function in four seconds instead of four minutes, and on top of that used 1/10 the ram. He was convinced I was cheating even after viewing my source code and hearing my explanation of what I was doing. A couple years later I got a phone call and he said "now I finally understand what you're doing!". Duh, PhD is phuddy-duddy ;)

- DL
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Don Lashier said:
Duh, PhD is phuddy-duddy ;)
- DL

Unfortunate isn't it? ALso interesting how people don't believe that you cando something well until they can "evidence" that you do.... What when they don't find that evidence? ;-)
 

Don Lashier

New member
deleted dup post - don't know how that happened :(

Just to make this post useful rather than an idle placeholder - in the 80's I took ten years off from the high-tech world and worked as a truck driver and associated with other blue-collar workers such as welders (my wife was a welder) and loggers. What I learned was that their average intelligence was as high or higher than college graduates. Who goes to college and attains "high" position is not a function of intelligence but of social position, economics, and happenstance. Witness GB ;)

- DL
 
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Alain Briot

pro member
Don Lashier said:
deleted dup post - don't know how that happened :(

Just to make this post useful rather than an idle placeholder - in the 80's I took ten years off from the high-tech world and worked as a truck driver and associated with other blue-collar workers such as welders (my wife was a welder) and loggers. What I learned was that their average intelligence was as high or higher than college graduates. Who goes to college and attains "high" position is not a function of intelligence but of social position, economics, and happenstance. Witness GB ;)

- DL

Just add "doctor" after your name and your IQ shoots up dramatically ;- )
 
Alain Briot said:
Just add "doctor" after your name and your IQ shoots up dramatically ;- )

Actually "Dr." goes in front of the name. "PhD." after is for psychologists.

But c'mon, guys. I am one of those that you are having such fun running down, (and I don't have the good sense to stay silent). I think writing decent code to operate in a production mode has gotten quite separated from understanding how computers think. We teach object oriented program structure and scripting languages because certain concepts can be gotten across clearly that way. Some of our students graduate into the real world without ever actually needing to use their own code on any problem of significant size. And some faculty members also don't ever need to cross this barrier. It's a constant source of frustration to me when a student addressing a problem in MATLAB or Java proves the feasibility of something that we have to start all over again to really solve. But I get some satisfaction showing them a solution that runs 1000x faster in C or even (whisper) Fortran.

So I don't disagree with you that there is something silly about claiming to understand a problem when you have only published an insight about it in a journal somewhere. But laugh at those individuals, not the class as a whole.

scott
(currently a prof, formerly an industrial researcher, physicist, journalist, auto-parts delivery boy...)
 
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Alain Briot

pro member
For the record I also have a PhD, whether it goes before or after my name . . . ;-) Keeping a sense of humor and not taking oneself too seriously is important.
 
Michael Tapes said:
4 - I believe that the design goal for LR is to be "just enough" so that you can go from ingest to print without having to leave LR.
My question got hijacked so I'll have to repeat it:
Does/will LR support print-to-file with user selectable printer profiles?
 
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