Photoshop maker Adobe Systems forecast disappointing revenue for this quarter and reported lower quarterly sales at its digital media business, which includes the Creative Cloud software suite.
Adobe shares fell nearly five percent in extended trading.
That’s not good. No reason to panic though.
Unless you are a professional photographer there is no reason to use PhotoShop. Besides there us a growing scale of Internet users that are taking apart heavily Photoshoped persons. Some of the comments are gold!
The old guard hates Adobe’s subscription model. The next generation wants only low-cost app options. Adobe should be evolving with the rest of the industry, but are instead stuck in the ‘Dot-Com’ era that was almost 20 years ago. Their apps are bloated, wanting, and out of sync with the new app makers. The only app worth it’s gold in weight is InDesign and even that can be easily replaced by a cheaper alternative. Where are the tools for the masses that makes it easy to create responsive content, mobile apps, blogs, etc.? I don’t need Photoshop for $120/yr when I can use several free alternatives. The main reason everything from Adobe is so expensive is because they have to pay for expensive acquisitions to keep their competition at bay. I would like to see Adobe reinvent itself, rewrite all their core programs and make them all better. That’s a tall order and it does not ensure success, but to hang on to their ‘dinosaur’ products for the sake of brand identity is not a winning strategy either.
Adobe is finding its market shrinking because what used to be magic is now commonplace.
there are a million Photoshop replacements (especially on OS X). Most common image manipulation is easily done by small apps like Pixelamtor etc.
Photoshop’s CMYK capability is a strong point. but with more images going into alternative publication methods, that market shrinks too.
Subscriptions are a failure because no one wants to rent their important tools. If you were a carpenter, would you rent a hammer or saw?
Well said.
I’ve been happy with my photoshop replacement, Pixelmator, but I’ve not seriously done the research on replacing inDesign. Could you suggest an/a alternative(s)? I totally agree about their dinosauric products and, more and more, their reliance on the yearly upgrade cycle to squash bugs that ought to have been put to rest in the previous version. Reminiscent of Quark and we all know where that sort of behavior got them.
great analogy Terry and I agree. Image manipulation and correction used to be rarefied and hard to do. Now apps like skrwt can correct horizon lines in the phone. The magic has gone out of Adobe’s world and they have nothing to show for it but pissed-off customers.