Although the company won"t say when, Adobe is planning to offer Photoshop as an ad-supported online service. Reports suggest it may happen within six months. Adobe recently announced a partnership with online photo sharing site Photobucket that involves plans to integrate Adobe"s Web-based video editing and remixing technology with Photobucket. An online version of Photoshop should appeal to the average consumer, but professional photographers – the major users of Photoshop – may not be won over so easily.
"[Photoshop] is a huge application, and the way I run it I have a lot of customization and plug-ins from third-party developers. I wouldn"t be so concerned about Internet speed (bandwidth), most of the time, but performance is a huge consideration. ...Anything that slows me down costs me money, or conversely, anything that speeds up my workflow makes me money," wrote Robert Houser, a Piedmont, California-based photographer, in an e-mail.