Adobe acquires technology assets of Pixmantec. Bye RawShooter, hello Lightroom.
// June 26th, 2006
I’ve been a fan of Pixmantec’s RawShooter product for a long time. First their free product and later their premium version which I bought last December. Today, Adobe announced that they have acquired Pixmantec’s RAW processing technology for use in their upcoming Lightroom product. The free RawShooter Essentials product will continue to be offered but the Premium version will be discontinued. Existing Pixmantec customers will continue to be supported by Adobe and will be given an upgrade path to Lightroom when it becomes available.
My feelings are mixed. I really like RawShooter and I’m bummed that now I’ll probably have to buy an upgrade to Lightroom or look for a different product rather than continue to get updates from Pixmantec. On the other hand, the Lightroom user interface looks much nicer than RawShooter’s. Lightroom + RawShooter’s RAW processing engine should be a great product.
Posted 2 years ago
This is bad news. Competition is good. I hope Adobe stays the heck away from RAW Developer.
Posted 2 years ago
Competition is good, but that always leads to one winner overall, ultimately. Adobe aquiring Picmatec’s raw technology has only sped up this process.
I can’t wait to see Lightroom on Windows; should be very interesting to see what Adobe have been working on.
Posted 2 years ago
Nearly purchased RS Premium a couple of days ago, will carry on with Essentials now…