Adobe buys Pixmantec

Just discovered this news item that was released yesterday (June 26, 2006) regarding the purchase of Pixmantex by ADOBE. http://www.pixmantec.com/company/adobe.asp

Adobe plans to discontinue RawShooter Pro and integrate the RAW conversion engine into into Adobe Lightroom. They will be allowing an "upgrade path" to Adobe digital imaging products for Pixmantec customers.

Interesting turn of events.

Drew

Oh bugger! A nice small lightweight application will vanish and be incorporated into a multi-gigabyte slow-as-snails monster

Bibble Labs are offering a "cross-grade" special price for Pixmantec Premium users
http://www.ephotozine.com/news/fullnews.cfm?NewsID=3096

But then there's always Capture One
Matt

I just attended a digital nature photography course where the instructor was using Rawshooter Pro. I was already trying Essentials and after spending some time with him, one-on-one, I decided to upgrade and did so.

Not sure what Adobe will incorporate and into what except Lightroom which looks like it is going to be highly priced. Another excellent stand alone product swallowed up by one of the giants.

Made sure I burned my dowload to a CD.

Mike

don't you just love it when the big boys take over and the choices becomes less, and the biggest gets slower.

I always smile when I see the David people using the terms "take over" and "swallowed up" when a large company buys a smaller company. Don't forget to consider that it rarely happens in reverse so it is not that unusual when Goliath buys the small. Most small start-ups dream of the day when they are bought out at a HUGE profit. (sure beats selling software on-line and probably selling out was their goal all along). Also consider that Pixmantec must have been open to offers for the sale to take place and guess what? They weren't taken over or swallowed up at all...they sold it! That is the risk we all take when buying software for cheap from a small upstart.

OK, I'm back down off my soap box now

I personally think Light Room looks VERY interesting and if you go to http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/video/ and watch the two tutorial videos on the beta version you will see that for yourself.
BTW, George Jardine narrates the tutorials and he is presently participating in the Pixmantec forum regarding the RawShooter/Lightroom connection. Some of the posts are kind of rude and narrow minded but overall it is very enlightening.
http://www.pixmantec.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=opentalk&Number=31812&page=0&fpart=all
(takes long to load)

I also am glad Adobe will be considering giving Pixmantec customers an upgrade price for LightRoom and I am anxious to hear it. If it is too little or if the full price of LR is too high for me then I will have to decide what to do when LR is eventually released. I just may continue to use RawShooter Pro. The good news is Adobe may support my RawShooter .RWS files in LR.

Regards

Drew Peabody

Hello All

Just to follow up on this... Today I, and I am sure every other registered RawShooter user, received an e-mail outlining Adobe's plans for LightRoom and RawShooter users. For those interested that did not receive the e-mail, find pasted below the final paragraph of the letter and I think it shows that no matter how people feel about Adobe that their offer of support could have been no better. Hat's off to the BIG guy. And hat's off to those at tiny Pixmatic for negotiating the interests of its customers into the deal.

Turns out that RawShooter Premium was a good investment after all eh Mattmatic?

Regards

Drew Peabody


>Snip from Pixmantec announcement July 13, 2006<

...Now that we've joined the Adobe family, we must emphasize that RawShooter users also are now Adobe customers, regardless of whether you ever purchase another Adobe product. Your satisfaction matters to us. Specifically, Adobe will do the following:

+Offer a free download version of Lightroom 1.0 for customers who bought RawShooter | premium prior to July 12th 2006, 12 noon European Standard Time. Given that Lightroom 1.0 will serve a much broader range of functionality and will be priced at a higher price point than RawShooter | premium, we believe this represents a great value for our customers.

+ Adobe will investigate to what extent your image corrections made within RawShooter can be transferred to Lightroom.

+We will deliver support for Canon EOS 30D In RawShooter | essentials this summer.

+We are deeply thankful for the support you have offered Pixmantec and we thank you in advance for your understanding and continued support.

The best is yet to come!

Sincerely yours,

Kenneth Laerke and Michael Jonsson

Well it means I can at least try LR v1. To be honest I bought RSP and ended up shelving it because the output quality was terrible compared to C1LE, especially at higher ISO ratings. Sure, the workflow was in many ways nicer, but nobody but me sees the workflow, only the output

From what I've heard, the founders of Pixmantec originally worked at Phase One - doing what I don't know (they may have just been GUI interface programmers for all I know). But the bottom line is that it doesn't come close to C1LE in terms of quality and colour control.

Still, I'll give LR the benefit of the doubt - the UI looks interesting. But in the end it comes down to output results. If LR can't take custom ICC profiles, or the quality doesn't exceed C1LE, then I'll probably shell out for the Pro version of C1 in the next year

We'll see...

Matt

[quote="MattMatic"]Excellent point Matt

Drew