John Nack says Photoshop bloated

[Blue Velvet]

Sure it is bloated. Anyone who claims otherwise doesn't really know what they are talking about.

Oh really? How about being specific... Tell us precisely in what way it's bloated instead of making spurious and subjective claims without anything to back that up. If anything's bloated, it's unsubstantiated statements without a shred of evidence.

Those who use it every day for work use features in it that others haven't got a clue what to do with. That's not bloated, you're (in the generic sense) just not who the software is aimed at. After all, it's easier to claim something is overkill than admit your own shortcomings.

 

[Evangelion]

Oh really? How about being specific... Tell us precisely in what way it's bloated instead of making spurious and subjective claims without anything to back that up. If anything's bloated, it's unsubstantiated statements without a shred of evidence.

It's bloated because it's too slow, because it consumes more resources than it needs to, because it's too sluggish. And I'm not singling out Photoshop here, just about ALL software suffers from it.

Those who use it every day for work use features in it that others haven't got a clue what to do with. That's not bloated, you're (in the generic sense) just not who the software is aimed at. After all, it's easier to claim something is overkill than admit your own shortcomings.

I'm not talking about features as such, I'm talking about speed and resource-consumption. Or are you saying that Photoshop is as fast as possible, that it would be utterly impossible to make it any faster or make it consume less resources?

 

[koobcamuk]

*Awaits Blue Velvet's reply*

 

[Blue Velvet]

Or are you saying that Photoshop is as fast as possible, that it would be utterly impossible to make it any faster or make it consume less resources?

No; I'm not a programmer. Are you? If that's the case, then we're coming at the argument from different perspectives. I'm talking about feature sets and the stupid concessions that I see within it for a less experienced crowd.

If I decided to change my career and start video-editing, I wouldn't expect Final Cut Pro to hide half of its menus and options from me as a default; I'd step my game up to deal with a pro application.

I don't have any problems with its speed or the resources it consumes. I tend to use fast Macs with plenty of RAM. I'm also aware that Photoshop and all the Creative Suite apps have had to move code bases... and that Adobe essentially have to rewrite most of it for the next revision. If any Adobe app is bloated and makes me curse on a daily basis, it's Acrobat Pro; even a 3mb PDF can bog it down.

Anyway, rereading the article again, he's not making the claim of it being bloated in a coding sense... ack, stoopid argument, stoopid me for falling into it.

Gotta go, Photoshop is calling. I've got some duotones to prepare; can't do those in Gimp or Elements either.

 

[Evangelion]

I don't have any problems with its speed or the resources it consumes. I tend to use fast Macs with plenty of RAM.

And there we have it. "It's not bloated if you have a good setup". We are hiding bloated software behind gigaflops of CPU-power, behind gigabytes of extremely fast RAM, behind hard-drives that are terabytes in size. We are "fixing" the issue of bloat by throwing more hardware at the problem.

 

[Blue Velvet]

And there we have it. "It's not bloated if you have a good setup". We are hiding bloated software behind gigaflops of CPU-power, behind gigabytes of extremely fast RAM, behind hard-drives that are terabytes in size. We are "fixing" the issue of bloat by throwing more hardware at the problem.

There's bloated and then there are tasks that used to take many minutes on older hardware to do. That's got nothing to do with the app at all, that's just a measure of what can be done these days on newer hardware. Not one of my professional colleagues pines for the days of Photoshop 3, no layers, on a Quadra.

 

[Pierce]

Then I guess we can make the discussion that any OS is bloated as well right?

Lol @ Evangelion.

 

[koobcamuk]

And there we have it. "It's not bloated if you have a good setup". We are hiding bloated software behind gigaflops of CPU-power, behind gigabytes of extremely fast RAM, behind hard-drives that are terabytes in size. We are "fixing" the issue of bloat by throwing more hardware at the problem.

Like putting a fat person in a larger room?

 

[Evangelion]

There's bloated and then there are tasks that used to take many minutes on older hardware to do. That's got nothing to do with the app at all, that's just a measure of what can be done these days on newer hardware. Not one of my professional colleagues pines for the days of Photoshop 3, no layers, on a Quadra.

What today takes 10 seconds might have taken 1 minute before. But when the consider the fact that we have computers that are maybe 200 times more powerful than we had "back then", then yes, we are talking about bloat.

 

[bartelby]

Not one of my professional colleagues pines for the days of Photoshop 3, no layers, on a Quadra.

I bet they do really!


As a side note, I recently thought about getting my 7500 running just to install PS 3.0.5 (?. the first PPC version)...

 

[Evangelion]

Then I guess we can make the discussion that any OS is bloated as well right?

More or less, yeah. Bloat is pretty universal characteristics of modern software. Like I said, I'm not singling out Photoshop as such.

Lol @ Evangelion.

?

 

[Blue Velvet]

What today takes 10 seconds might have taken 1 minute before...

No, more like what used to take 30 minutes... go and have a cup of coffee... can now be done in seconds. Tasks that you couldn't even do on a desktop machine ten years ago now can be done by a Mac Mini.

I honestly don't know what kind of background or history you have in the field, but if there's anything that causes my peers grief, it's not the size and speed of Photoshop... it's rare, even on a mid-level machine, for it to devastatingly and intrusively halt the flow of creating artwork; that's reserved for rendering stuff in 3D apps these days.

 

[Evangelion]

No, more like what used to take 30 minutes.

Or one minute. Point is that performance of software has not progressed in similar speeds as speed of hardware has progressed. And that difference is caused by bloat. I don't understand why that is so hard to admit. Hell, it wasn't long when resizing Finder-windows was sluggish in OS X! I remember reading a review of Tiger that said that "resizing Finder-windows is ALMOST smooth on my Quad-G5 with 2.5GB of RAM". And can you HONESTLY say that PS is as fast as it could be at this very moment? No you can not.

Am I the only one who sees the problem here? The problem is manageable only because speed of computers more or less double every 2-3 years or so, with amounts of RAM shooting straight up as well. That is: we throw more hardware at the problem and call it a day.

Seriously: Photoshop is not a god that you are not allowed to criticize. You CAN admit that it is bloated. The bloat might not annoy you personally, bit that does not mean that it does not exist.

 

[koobcamuk]

I'll chime in by saying that people do not get 4 times the work done compared to 10 years ago, or something crazy like that. The end result just looks a little different.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Or one minute. Point is that performance of software has not progressed in similar speeds as speed of hardware has progressed. And that difference is caused by bloat.

No matter how many times you repeat something, it doesn't make it true.

There's nothing that you've indicated that seems to be backed up by being a professional user or having coding experience or even the development history of Photoshop. End of story, and end of my contributions to a futile discussion that has strayed so far from the meaning of 'bloated' in the context of the article and the user-experience of using Photoshop, day in, day out.

 

[iGav]

As a side note, I recently thought about getting my 7500 running just to install PS 3.0.5 (?. the first PPC version)...

I consider v3 to be the first truly modern incarnation of Photoshop.

I used it until v5 came out because v4 was just...

And don't tell Blue, but v3 did have layers.

 

[bartelby]

I consider 3 to be the first truly modern incarnation of Photoshop.

I used it until 5 came out because 4 was just...

And don't tell Blue, but 3 did have layers.

I used 3 until 6 came out, then I remembered I actually had a license and I could upgrade for cheap


I didn't like to say about the layers because I wasn't 100% sure.

 

[iGav]

I used 3 until 6 came out, then I remembered I actually had a license and I could upgrade for cheap .

Not an unwise decision.

Though even now I think, what the hell were they thinking with Photoshop 4?

I didn't like to say about the layers because I wasn't 100% sure.

2.5 was the last version sans-layers, but even then you could approximate them mathmatically.

Anyway I digress, best let folk get back to the discussion at hand.