Adobe Photoshop online…and beyond…
March 27th, 2008 Posted in General(Ellipses…are fun…!)
San Jose Mercury News online reported early this morning that Adobe is getting into the online photo editing/hosting business with it’s new venture Photoshop Express.
The article thinks that this may be too little too late because of the other services that already exist on the Internet and who already have many, many subscribers — Flickr, Snapfish and Kodak Gallery. The difference this time is that Photoshop is a well-known brand and will be a big draw.
I haven’t checked out the site yet but I’m hoping that a lot of the ‘coolness’ of Photoshop will be translated into the site — filtering effects more extensive image correction tools.
As it relates to instructional design, all I can say is that this is but one more step towards de-centralizing our ability to do our jobs. The task of designing digital stuff is now possible from any location — on a laptop at a park, at a cybercafe, sneaking in a couple of minutes at a public terminal at a library or school, etc…
Companies like Adobe are moving towards what many of us think is the inevitability of the de-centralized workplace; that as long as there are places for us to park our stuff, develop our stuff and distribute our stuff on the Internet, we don’t have to remain tethered to one physical location. Furthermore, the physical medium and format of how we view and manipulate digital based media is changing what with LED monitors now becoming smaller, more portable and eventually, foldable. The last time foldable monitors logged into our consciousness was with a story over 5 years ago and we have yet to see a consumer version of this. In any case, the future is extremely promising for micro-technology with respect to how we view and interact with digital data.
And this begs the ultimate question: If we can do our work digitally from ANYWHERE, and at ANYTIME, then….when…do get to sleep?
Hmmm…
… ….