CNet broke the story on Adobe releasing an online version of Photoshop, ad supported and all. The product is to launch within six months.

Why are they doing it and what good comes out? Well, they’re doing it for the money of course. Ad supported means ad dollars, but also for the possibility of spinoff software sales. You don’t buy Photoshop for resizing images, but you might if you’re going to do more heavy graphical work. This way, Adobe can earn money on people that really aren’t interested in buying image software at all, as well as getting extra sales when they need more graphical power.

I read somewhere that a ridiculously big percentage (in the 90’s) of all images online had passed through Photoshop at least once. Adobe sure doesn’t sell that many licenses, so what you got is lots of pirated versions out there. Most of them are just for resizing images as well, so why not offer that functionality online? This is a great move to try and limit the piracy, since most people don’t want to steal if they don’t have to.

So how are bloggers benefiting from this? Isn’t it obvious? If Adobe makes a good product with their online version of Photoshop, which I’m sure they will, it’ll be a lot easier to get good compression for images that you intend to blog. I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be a send to blog feature as well, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one. Still, it’s great news since the vast majority haven’t discovered Gimp or Paint.NET yet. Now maybe they shouldn’t?

Web apps, how I love ‘em…

There’s a flipside though, and Mike Arrington points that out in a post. Photoshop is a huge brand, strong and solid as can be, so the competition will suffer.

Related posts:

1. Adobe Systems releases Photoshop Lightroom 2
2. Adobe AIR for Linux Alpha now on Adobe Labs
3. LiveJournal unveils ad-supported version
4. ILovePhotos releases in beta; web-based version also introduced
5. Calcanis takes a few days off from Blogging after the Data Spill ( or how to fix this mess)

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