Adobe Planning Hosted Online Version of Photoshop

Posted on April 9, 2007

Adobe is going to take Photoshop online according to a CNET news story. Photoshop is an extremely popular photo and graphics editing tool. Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen told CNET News.com that they have watched Google go online with other types of software and that they "want to make sure that we are there before they are."

Chizen says, "That is new (for Adobe). It's something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises."

Photoshop is a very popular brand so the potential is there for Adobe to enter the market with its editing software and possibly expand into photo and video sharing as well as social networking. Drawn.ca says it is "high noon for online image editing - and it's the illustrators and visual creatives who stand to benefit the most." A post on John Nack's Adobe blog notes that it isn't the "professional version of Photoshop" that will be offered online but tools targeted at consumers instead.

Some online photo editing software that Adobe's online Photoshop tool would compete with includes PXN8, Fauxto, Picture2Life, Picnik, Preloadr and Snipshot. There are also a couple of downloadable tools it will compete with, such as Paint.NET and GIMP.