If I knew Pixelmator could do everything (to my intermediate/advanced knowledge) that Photoshop does – forging the new 3D abilities that I never use) I’d switch in a heartbeat because I prefer to support smaller developers if for no other reason.

Well written, and very good points, Amber.

I’ve used the gimp. Unfortunately it’s no where as good as photoshop. Especially now Photoshop has content aware fill there is nothing that even comes close.

The only programs I typically use from Adobe are: Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator.

I’m not sure you are putting the blame where it needs to be. I’ve heard a lot of Mac users who said everything was working great untill the last upgrade of OSX. I know from the server side us Admins are not even recommending people upgrade the server because of how many Severe issues that are plaguing the software.

I know you hate PC’s but I can’t remember a time Photoshop has ever crashed on my machine. Actually I can’t remember the last time something crashed on my Windows 7 machine. My Machine’s uptime is almost 3 weeks. The only reason why it isn’t longer is that there was updates.

I have a contact in San Francisco who works for Marketing at Adobe. At the moment, Adobe is slammed. They’ve obviously got Edge and Muse getting Beta releases, also working on the next Creative Suite, and apps, so of course they’re concentrating on that more and while it’s not perfect, Adobe is an en masse corporation and there are causes for concern but what it falls down to is hierarchy, the customer, and economics.

Note: This is an inspired guess.

1) Hierarchy: While there are many employers at Adobe Systems working on the products every day, a lot of these people are bottom ladder/new people working on these tools. It’s obviously not a team of 5 people who know Objective C and write the tool in 6 months. A lot of bottom ladder people work on it while under leadership of a few people. However, this is also a point in their never ending learning curve, so OF COURSE the code’s going to go wrong in one of the lines out of the odd thousand.

Also, a lot of third party products aren’t perfect, as you’ve stated, Pixelmator gives you the Spinning Beach Ball of Death, so this is in the same boat.

While some third party products are well done, Corporate products are bound to fail as there’s a lot of “Yes” men to go through, constant change of ideas, extremely tight deadlines etc. etc. so of course it’s going to go wrong to a point.

2) The customer: I believe the user tends to have a naive point of view of HOW and WHY these products should be perfect. Again, point 1; no one knows the every day goings on of that company, yet are well prepared to judge, just because it’s a multi-million dollar company, it has to be well done or not at all.

It’s an enormous company, it’s not as simple as that. Hell, even Apple has problems with their products eventhough there are thousands working on it everyday! There will always be a problem, somewhere.

3) Economics: Sure, Adobe sell their products for hundreds, even thousands of dollars, however how are they going to earn all of that when they offer discounts and editions that are cheaper, i.e. for Education or Students*? How can they earn all that when they can’t bolt up the price when some versions are cheaper than the other?

(Adobe Design Premium Student Edition is £250 over here – that’s pretty much making Photoshop cheaper than Pixelmator!)

Also, there is demand. We live in a time where people are pirating this software everyday. So of course they need the high price, third–party applications don’t necessarily have this problem as they’re only used by so many people, however, massive industry–standard software does. So the price needs to be kept up, otherwise Adobe won’t have as many offices let alone workers.

Also, on this whole “They don’t care about you” point of view – I’m a bit annoyed if their customer service is rude and unhelpful, however that’s not 100% the problem, Adobe has to think of the end user and while it is their fault it’s not perfect, it’s never going to be perfect. Nothing ever is.

As for them not updating CS3 BEFORE Snow Leopard, I think it’s more of a case they just started working on CS4 as well as working out certain problems, it’s a never–stopping ball, but if you’re still using CS3 I think it’s time to abandon ship; it’s pretty much obselete.

In short: I know it’s easy to just attack the big, evil corporation, there’s a bigger picture to all of this. There’s a lot of layers and people behind this whole thing, and while I agree to some points, like they should be updating these problems and fixing them, I don’t know 100% what goes on everyday but I’m giving a really inspired guess. Ever since I’ve had this contact, it’s given me a big picture on how corporations really work, it’s just not as simple as that, sadly.

On your Photoshop problem though; have you tried certain things like deleting a .plist file to make it work? I’ve heard that can be a common problem for applications. Also, trying to change your Photoshop settings i.e. take up less memory and less cache. I think it sounds more the system is being a whiny b!7ch and not wanting to work with it.

I had a similar problem in College, except with CS2. My College bought new Snow Leopard Macs yet they installed old CS2 software, and it was such a bad idea. The OS kept crashing and dying, the applications kept quitting, so it was either a case of old software on current OS or the OS not wanting to work with certain aspects of old software. However, your problem sounds more down to the OS than the software as I think CS3 can work even on Lion so I don’t see why this shouldn’t work on Snow Leopard.

As for Dreamweaver…..I’ve been working with Dreamweaver for the better part of 3 years, but now I think it’s time for me to move on and use something more code–friendly, like Textmate or Coda, so I think it’s a no–brainer you’re doing the right thing on that front.

The Australian Dollar at the moment is higher than the US Dollar and has been for a long time now.

However the US Adobe store lists (as a download) lightroom as $299.

The Australian Adobe store lists (as a download) lightroom as $412.

If they’re going to rip me off, I’ll rip them off. Simple.