Jul 02 2007

Version Rot and Photoshop

Published by Justin at 7:35 am under Missing Features, Usability

Version Rot

Adobe Photoshop is a great software application, but it’s suffering from version rot.

Version rot happens when a successful software product reaches maturairty (usually around version 5) and the development team begins to introduce less features and less helpful features with each release.

The problems is usually caused by three factors:

  1. At some point the initial project stakeholders (read: founder effect) will move on to new projects, and with them will go their creativity and driving energy;
  2. Institution nervousness sets in, where no one in the company wants to be the guy to mess-up a popular product (risk taking stops); and,
  3. The most common use for a product is now beyond the niche originally being served.

Photoshop was designed for professional photographers. And they still use it. But the biggest user population today are web developers. The people who need to take the Art Directors mock-up, carve it up and spit out some PNGs or JPGs.

Missing Feature

The ability to have Photoshop save a copy as a JPEG as you save the PSD file (maybe the first time you export as JPEG it asks you were to put the file, and then from then on it just dumps an export there).

Why is this helpful? Because a web developer will continuously adjust a PSD, export to a JPEG, test in an HTML page and rinse, later and repeat. Ad nauseum. Just make it easier Adobe!

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