Following Online Video Remix Service, Adobe will take Photoshop Online

by John Neely

Published on Mar 1, 2007 12:25 PM
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March 1, 2007 - According to a News.com article published yesterday, Adobe will offer an online version of Photoshop with rollout of the service in about six months.  The article followed an announcement earlier this week by Adobe and video and photo-sharing service Photobucket will offer Adobe Remix to Photobucket’s 35 million subscribers. 

Adobe Remix is a “Premiere-inspired” video editing and remix web application that can be used to perform rudimentary edits on a timeline, and allows users to integrate their own footage or shared material from other Photobucket users.  The Adobe Remix announcement signals the entry of the world’s dominant creative software developer into a market that had previously been the domain of startups like Jumpcut and Eyespot, two video sharing services that enable users to edit or ”remix” footage online.

In yesterday’s article, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said of the company’s plans to offer a hosted version of Photoshop, "We recognize there is a customer there--we recognize they are not going to pay us, necessarily, directly. But we could use ad revenue as a model. Google has demonstrated that it works pretty well for certain types of applications," Chizen said.

For a company that has built its Photoshop and Premiere brands on a traditional stand-alone application model, the move to offer stripped-down services online represents a shift in strategy.  While today’s network infrastructure doesn’t make hosted versions of full-featured software practical, the proliferation of inexpensive imaging equipment and cheap or free creative tools has led to an explosive growth in the number of people who work with digital media.  Adobe’s plans to cater to the emerging DIY media producer market have been mirrored in the camcorder industry in recent years with many companies integrating the ability to capture low-resolution footage intended for web distribution into their camcorders.  

The growing popularity of flash memory and HDD-based camcorders is another indication that consumers don’t necessarily see television as the destination for their footage.  Both of these formats allow for very fast data transfer from camcorder to PC, and the footage can then be uploaded directly to a sharing service like YouTube or Photobucket.  While many consumers appreciate the fact the DVD-based camcorders produce discs that are compatible with their DVD players, shooters who primarily show their videos online might see TV-oriented media as an expensive and encumbering hassle. 

With services like Adobe Remix already available, and Photoshop coming online soon, video sharers will have all the more reason to opt for equipment that makes web distribution as seamless as possible.