Filed under: Software, Universal Binary
Adobe Photoshop Elements delayed until 2008
Sometimes it seems like you can always count on Adobe to disappoint. Today they released Photoshop Elements 6 for Windows, but according to Macworld the Mac version will have to wait until "early 2008." This is because the two versions are on "different development schedules." The Mac version of Elements has long been missing some features from the Windows side (particularly in image management), so perhaps this is not surprising. Nonetheless, it's sad to note that as long as we were waiting for a Universal version of Photoshop, this means that Elements will end up taking nearly a year longer still! Fortunately, I suppose, you could just give the newly released Pixelmator a try instead and not worry about it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
v-tuaw said 4:08PM on 9-25-2007
This is certainly poor timing for Adobe and excellent timing for the Pixelmator team. Pixelmator is not quite the polished app that I expect Photoshop Elements to be but it's very close and the hole that Adobe is leaving open by releasing late sure looks Pixelmator shaped.
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John Nack said 4:13PM on 9-25-2007
Hi Mat,
"Sometimes it seems like you can always count on Adobe to disappoint." That's tough to hear. Lightroom appearing on Mac six months ahead of Windows, or Adobe releasing an Intel-native beta of Photoshop six months ahead of the shipping version so that Mac users wouldn't have to put up with Rosetta any longer than absolutely necessary, is all forgotten.
I guess I'd look at the Elements situation as a glass half empty/half full case. There was no Elements 5 for Mac, period. Now it's announced that there *will* be a version of Elements 6 for Mac, but it'll take somewhat longer to ship. The situation isn't perfect, sure, but I'd rather look on the bright side of things.
J.
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Quine said 4:24PM on 9-25-2007
@John Too bad they didn't update the UI of Fireworks and Dreamweaver so the windows versions are much easier to navigate, left a TON of bugs in both of them (only about half of which they've fixed now), and made the performance of a lot of CS3 apps poorer on Mac than PC (this is my opinion based on running CS3 trials in a winxp virtual machine vs on the same machine in OS, x where the virtual machine ran faster even though it was virtualized and given fewer resources).
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Stephen P said 6:04PM on 9-25-2007
I have to say, I have Elements 4.0 and I have never been crazy about it. On my 1.25 Ghz mini, it takes a long, long time to load, and many of the functions are slow, especially the magic extractor. Once it's loaded, the UI consists of big, ugly bars running vertically on teh two sides of my screen and one across the top. So it takes up a bunch of my screen space, and is overall odd and confusing and not "mac" at all. Furthermore, I find Elements to be a very difficult program to learn and use. I work at a newspaper, and I feel more comfortable on the regular version of Photoshop, which is supposedly the hard one. And I haven't been able to find any "missing manual" or "For Dummies" books for the Mac version of Elements at any bookstore. If you have iPhoto '06 or 08, chances are you'll have all the photoediting power you need for sending photos to relatives. If you need/want more power, try Acorn or Pixelmator first. And if you're rich, just buy yourself a copy of regular Photoshop; its more powerful and there's tons of literature to help you learn it.
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Daniel said 10:47PM on 9-25-2007
And don't forget Flying Meat's Acorn. (http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/) I love this little image editor, and it costs about half of photoshop elements.
I think Adobe dropped the ball on delaying this release the same way Microsoft BU did on delaying Office 2008 for Mac. Why wait for the behemoth companies to move when there are already better and less expensive options like iWork? I would have upgraded office 6 months ago, but I don't plan on it now, and the same goes for PSE. I don't have any need for it now, so Adobe can delay it's release as long as they want IMO.
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Scott K said 7:38PM on 11-16-2007
@John I'm sorry you feel Mat's comment tough to hear, but Adobe is really dropping the ball on this one. Yes, those other achievements are nice, but they don't mean a thing to me. I don't use *those* products. I use Photoshop Elements. If I used those other products, I probably wouldn't have a need for Photoshop Elements, now would I?
You fail to recognize that you are working with two different groups here.
Look at it from our perspective: Those of us that are consumer hobbyist have been waiting and waiting for a new version of Elements. We've seen Windows users get not one, but two new versions while we continue to wait. Meanwhile products like Pixelmator are coming out, and while not quite up to Elements (yet), they are tempting us to make a permanent switch.
I can't believe that you wouldn't recognize that you're dealing with different markets when you left that comment. It's thinking like that that will cause Adobe to lose in the marketplace.
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