[Brad]

Originally Posted by Anthem GIMP works with PSD, so I don't see why Apple couldn't.

Apple's image framework already plays nicely with PSD files. Note that you can open PSDs perfectly fine in Preview.app.

[Banana]

Originally Posted by Brad Apple's image framework already plays nicely with PSD files. Note that you can open PSDs perfectly fine in Preview.app.

How friggin' pathetic....

Come on, Billy. You can't do that?

Not even Adobe programs can open psd files on windows.

*really twitching for a Apple*

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Banana Not even Adobe programs can open psd files on windows.

I would hope that they do since it's Adobe's own format!

You mean Microsoft programs, right?

[yeyeogun]

Adobe bought LiveMotion. Quark did not buy LiveMotion.

[Banana]

Originally Posted by Brad I would hope that they do since it's Adobe's own format! You mean Microsoft programs, right?

Microsoft programs' inability to open psd files, no surprise.

Adobe reader on Windows, no go.

Adobe photo album reader, no go.

[datapusher]

Originally Posted by Banana Microsoft programs' inability to open psd files, no surprise. Adobe reader on Windows, no go. Adobe photo album reader, no go.

that's because a .psd file is an adobe photoshop file.
on the windows platform, the only way to open it would be photoshop, or through a couple of pro editing software titles.

[Banana]

Correct- but if you read up, Brad says that Preview can open PSD files. Furthermore, my Acrobat Reader can open .ai files just fine. Not so on Windows platform.

[Brad]

Ah, well, I guess that's just another case of prime Adobe suckage after all.

Should I mention that since rudimentary PSD display support is built in at the OS level that you can drag-and-drop PSDs into modern graphics apps and they'll "just work"? I just now tried this in OmniGraffle for kicks and it worked as expected.

What was this thread about again?

[Banana]

hmm... no wonder Apple didn't need to bundle graphic app.

It's already there!

[chucker]

Originally Posted by yeyeogun Adobe bought LiveMotion. Quark did not buy LiveMotion.

I meant LivePicture, of course.

[Unch]

Originally Posted by Moogs evilswan: A) Photoshop Elements is not a graphics application, it's a photo editor. B) Apple already has a consumer photo editor (it's called iPhoto and competes directly with Elements in a lot of ways including price point).

I don't know what Adobe are doing with the latest versions of Photoshop Elements (they seem to have integrated Phtoshop Album into it), but Photoshop Elements 2 is so different to iPhoto '06 it isn't funny.

You're getting a large chunk of Photoshop's power for a fraction of the price. Layers, filters, a multitude of tools. You just don't get anything like that in iPhoto.

One huge difference - you can't create an image from scratch in iPhoto. While I can use PSE in place of PS for many tasks (in fact for my purposes PSE does everything I could ever want), the same could not be said for iPhoto.

Again, I don't know the extent to which Adobe have integrated PS Album into PSE 3 and 4, but it seems to me that while there is an amount of overlap, the primary functions are different. PSE is an image editor with some organisational caperbilities, while iPhoto is a photo organiser with limited editing abilities.

[Banana]

Originally Posted by Brad Should I mention that since rudimentary PSD display support is built in at the OS level that you can drag-and-drop PSDs into modern graphics apps and they'll "just work"? I just now tried this in OmniGraffle for kicks and it worked as expected. What was this thread about again?

After working on a PPT went bad from the crossover from Mac to PC, it quickly became clear why PPT fucked up on Windows; I had unwittingly taken in a couple of PSD files which caused the Windows PPT to barf. The last one was treated as a TIFF, so there was a message "This file needs a Quicktime and LZW compressor to view the files". I still don't get this one though. Resaving them as JPGs fixed the problem though TIFF was a bit stubborn. Even after saving as a JPG, Windows still insist it's a TIFF.

I was just speechless. When I made the PPT, I didn't have to think about files; they just "worked". With Windows, it just "barfs".

Anyway, that's my fanboi rant.

okthxbye.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Unch You're getting a large chunk of Photoshop's power for a fraction of the price. Layers, filters, a multitude of tools. You just don't get anything like that in iPhoto.

Yeah, Elements is basically the full-blown Photoshop minus a few features like masking, non-RGB color spaces, some filters, and a few other little things. You can see this list for more details.

I'm not sure exactly where Moogs was coming from with that one. Moogs?

[chucker]

He may have confused Photoshop Elements with PhotoDeluxe, or with Photoshop Album?

[BuonRotto]

Brad, masking and curves are not "little things"! Adobe was careful to take out anything that pros would need for real power. Filters are a dime a dozen. The only important things missing from iMaginator are complex layering and more powerful masking tools (it's a bit primitive at this point though it can be done). Brushes, or rather painting and filters are not a big part of Photoshop functionality really.

Funny perhaps that Stone Design and others can use Apple's own CoreImage tech to create a poor man's image editor like what you're talking about and that Apple hasn't done this beyond the simple variations and adjustments available in iPhoto '06. I think, however, that Apple doesn't want to do this if they don't have to. They want to see if another company can do something to take up the baton, sort of like TIFFany on OpenStep -- an app I loved but had much growing pain going into OS X. The guys now work for Apple and do things like, oh, CoreImage, so the possibility is very much there.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by BuonRotto Brad, masking and curves are not "little things"!

Oh, I know that. My own prosumer workings would be painful without masks and curves! Relatively, though, they aren't that big when you consider all the myriad of features that that Elements still offers over iPhoto.

[blackjack75]

AFAIK it's rather easy to add *basic* support for PSD, because (AFAIK) each PSD file has a flat copy inside. So you can write a translator without having to understand all the layers, the filters, vector elements, the text rendering and so on.

PSD is _officially_ documented by Adobe. So anyone willing to write an app supporting it in all its aspects can do so without reverse engineering. That said, given how powerful PhotoShop is, that is still a _LOT_ of work to open and save it without destroying some info. Someone wanting to write a pro app definitely would have to dedicated months of work to get a perfect implementation.

I happen to be the author of ChocoFlop (a CoreImage based app). Which as some previous poster mentionned is currently at best a funny toy. At some point I had to add the ability to load/save complex documents (layers, live filters and so on). I considered making PSD the default format but I decided that either you make it perfect or you don't make it at all.

If you write your own app, you want to support also you own features which PSD might allow or not to save. So in the end you always end up with yet-another crappy proprietary format.

Since this is a poorman's personal project with no funding/time I can't dedicate months to write perfect PSD filters. So I settled on a simple bundle file format (a folder with an XML description and some tiff files inside). A bundle is a folder that is recognized by OSX as a pseudo-file. Apple's apps such as Pages or KeyNote use this system.

Because I know people won't care (much) about my yet-another-crappy-fileformat I include in each saved file a flat copy of the whole rendered document as a simple .tiff file. Of course this makes the document slightly heavier but it makes it quite easy to write an import filter for anyone.

You can read more about the format I chose here: http://wiki.chocoflop.com/index.php?...ve_File_Format .