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Google Funds Work for Photoshop on Linux

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 20, 2008 04:02 PM
from the good-friends-to-have dept.
Software Businesses Google The Internet Linux
S point 2 writes "Google has announced that they have hired Codeweavers, maker of the popular Wine software to make Photoshop run better on Linux. 'Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now...We look forward to further improvements in this area.' It is unknown whether or not the entire Creative Suite will be funded for support, but for the time being it seems Photoshop-on-Linux development is getting a new priority under Google."
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Firehose:Google funds work for Photoshop on Linux by S point 2 (1190255)
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  • Cue piracy on linux (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cryophallion (1129715) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:12PM (#22492850)
    Finally, linux users can join in on the piracy of adobe products that the Mac and Windows people have been able to do. See, linux IS getting more like the other OS's every day! :^)

  • Linux is too commercial now man! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cathoderoytube (1088737) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:34PM (#22493212)
    I predict if they get Photoshop running properly on Linux, Linux users will abandon the OS in favor of something even more obscure and difficult to use. Then they'll tote that operating system as superior to Windows and piss about how nobody adopts it.

  • WINE is an interesting strategy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mlwmohawk (801821) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:34PM (#22493216)
    With all the nonsense of Vista, a WINE porting strategy makes sense.

    Think of it like this: Microsoft is trying to push a product (Vista) that its customers do not want. The *only* reason that any consumer would buy it is because they have virtually no choice because of Microsoft's monopoly.

    Step in Google, fund WINE, work to create a Windows execution environment that supports many of those XP programs that will not work under Vista. Linux already supports many of the hardware devices that Vista does not. A working WINE may be able to eat away at Vista adoption.

    What is needed is a smooth integration of Windows executables with Linux execution code. Conceptually, windows programs are nothing more than binaries that need their own environment, similar to the way one runs GNOME applications of KDE and vice versa, or better still Java programs. (Yes, I know that Java is a tokenized interpretive environment with a JIT, but this is a discussion not a compsci course.)

    IMHO, the programs that should work out of the box on Linux with wine is quicken, quickbooks, peachtree, and photoshop. This would open up so many home and small business users who would love to use Linux but can't.

  • Wow, improvements really show (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:41PM (#22493322)

    Preamble: I'm a photographer needing to process tens of thousands of photos relatively swiftly. The functionality I need isn't all that advanced (curves, levels, an occasional straighten horizon (measure + arbitrary rotate), crop, unsharp mask, and sometimes an action to find edges, feather and apply unsharp mask on that), but being able to access and apply this functionality swiftly is an absolute must because of the volume of photos I deal with. Photoshop is optimized to perfection to allow a swift workflow, while the gimp seems optimized to perfection to hinder it. Focus is never where I need it, shortcuts to access tools don't work depending on which sub-window has focus, etc. So yes, I really need Photoshop.

    I last tried Photoshop 7 under wine about a year ago. It was functional to an amazing degree (for someone who'd never seen or used wine before), but the rough edges were slightly too rough for me to be able to switch to Linux fulltime. I could trigger a dozen crashes in Photoshop at will just by resizing panels and doing other simple things like that, the program didn't feel native (alt-tabbing would keep the panels in the foreground, obscuring other programs), and focus sometimes strayed, amongst other lesser (but still annoyingly noticeable) issues.

    I just tried the latest wine with these Google sponsored improvements, and wow. This is an amazing difference. Every single issue I saw a year ago is gone. Photoshop feels as responsive as it does under Windows (perhaps even more so), and I went through an hour long editing session without being slowed down or annoyed even once.

    As far as I'm concerned, Linux is now ready to become my main OS.

    Google: I don't like your lack of respect for my privacy, but for this work on Wine, I can say from the bottom of my heart: Thank you!

    • Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cryophallion (1129715) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:09PM (#22492794)
      For some professionals, there are tools that do not yet exist in gimp that they cannot be without (cmyk, layer grouping, adjustment layers, the list goes on).

      However, gimp is good enough for many amateur and some professional uses.

      While I like the gimp for what I do, my father who does photo retouching prefers photoshop.

      If having photoshop work better(I believe it was bronze on winehq.com a little while back) helps make people make the move to linux, I'm all for it.

      While we're at it... how about premiere too? Linux video editing doesn't even have a gimp equiv (kino doesn't give me enough control, cinelerra crashes, kdenlive has a few bugs and not enough effects yet...)

        • Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Informative)

          by StevisF (218566) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:35PM (#22493222)
          From your link. Yey for reading!

          "Note that 'CMYK' colors are immediately translated into RGB when used; GIMP does not have any built-in support CMYK mixtures that cannot be represented in RGB, such as rich blacks, though they can be simulated to a limited extent with third-party add-ons.)"

    • Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RobotRunAmok (595286) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:09PM (#22492804)
      It's called The GIMP! ...which is probably the number one reason so few digital art professionals take it seriously.

      I love linux, and advocate for it ad nauseum, but the devs need to do something about the clever-only-to-the-AV-Club names with which they continue to burden their otherwise fine creations.

      • Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Khaed (544779) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:37PM (#22493252)
        As a huge Linux fan and user, I have to agree. The GIMP is just... it's a bad name.

        I can tell someone I use Firefox, Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Pidgin -- that, not so bad. I can say I use Gnome or KDE (depends on my mood), or I can tell them I use Pan. But I cannot look at another human being and tell them to use "The GIMP."

    • This is not a troll: GIMP is hard for newbies (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:16PM (#22492936)
      Parent is largely right.

      The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies.

      Most people don't want to do hugely complex photoshopping, just remove red eye from phots and a few other simple effects.

      I've tried to use GIMP a few times, without using the manuals, but after a few minutes of getting nowhere I've fired up a Windows box and used photoshop (also without a manual).

      Perhaps this exercise will give the GIMP people a bit of motivation to make the software more newbie-friendly.

      We're getting to the stage where Linux is almost simple to use. "It was hard to write, so it should be hard to use" no longer cuts it.

      • Re:This is not a troll: GIMP is hard for newbies (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Mr. Underbridge (666784) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:23PM (#22493042)

        The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies. Most people don't want to do hugely complex photoshopping, just remove red eye from phots and a few other simple effects.

        GIMP isn't a program designed for people who want to just remove some red eye from photos. For that matter, Photoshop would be exceptionally overpriced and overly complicated for that as well. Photoshop is a tool designed for professionals and highly skilled amateurs, and the GIMP replicates many of those features.

        People who want to mess with simple stuff can get Picasa for free, from Google.

        I personally think that the GIMP's major problem is that it's interface is different from Photoshop, which is a problem given its target audience is Photoshop users. I would claim that it's not more complicated than Photoshop, just different. I learned GIMP first and found Photoshop awkward to use.

          • Re:This is not a troll: GIMP is hard for newbies (Score:5, Insightful)

            by sunking2 (521698) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @05:10PM (#22493708)
            So here's some irony. Many on here would argue that the piracy of photoshop does not hurt Adobe because it wouldn't be bought anyway. However, it is hurting Gimp by reducing the number of users looking for something free.

            And yes, I do think that photoshop piracy is a HUGE. As mentioned, hardly anyone would shell over $600 bucks for casual use. I bet it's pretty high on the piracy list, especially for those people who normally don't pirate but are willing to take that PS cd home from work and install it on their home computer.

    • Re:Let's get it out of the way... (Score:5, Funny)

      by hotdiggitydawg (881316) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:53PM (#22493448)

      The GIMP sucks!
      Only if you open the zip on his leather hood...

    • Re:wut? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jeremy_white (598942) * on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:22PM (#22493022) Homepage
      We're the largest single contributor to Wine. We host the Wine web
      site, employ the Wine maintainer, and do much of the 'heavy lifting'
      required to keep Wine moving. Of course, many others contribute as well,
      so we're certainly not the sole maker, but we very much play a vital
      role in the making of Wine.

      • Re:wut? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by HappySmileMan (1088123) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:34PM (#22493206)
        As far as I know Codeweavers sell a version of Wine, so is this deal going to mean Photoshop will work better on Wine that I have installed for free, or the version that you sell.

    • Re:Stop this, stop this now Google (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eravnrekaree (467752) on Wednesday February 20 2008, @04:39PM (#22493282)
      I think this has value if it will help improve Wine so it can run all Windows programs. That really should be the focus here. I do think funding Wine would really help along Linux adoption and help end the dreadful Microsoft monopoly. So, this is not necessarily just about photoshop, but making all Windows programs run on Linux. and it is the fact that so many programs run only on Windows, which keeps Windows dominate. If we have millionaires reading this who would like to speed up adoption of Linux, funding work on developing a way to run windows hardware drivers on linux would also be a huge help. There is always a lag between hardware being released and running on Linux because companies always spend less time on Linux. While open source or native windows drivers are best, it is not realistic to expect Linux to be adopted when people cannot run their hardware for years perhaps because there is no driver. This would allow as well the hardware to be used with Windows drivers until a native linux driver is produced.

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