Apple: Aperture Not a Photoshop Competitor


The hearts at Adobe must be beating a little faster today.

After all, Apple has released a piece of software aimed fairly and squarely at photographers, traditionally a fertile market for Adobe's all-powerful Photoshop.

However, in comments made to Maccentral, Apple executives insist Photoshop integration was the aim, not Photoshop competition.

"We are positioning this as an all-in-one solution," said Rob Schoeben, Apple's vice president of Applications Marketing, who is quoted in the article. "We know photographers use Photoshop, so we integrated support into Aperture."

Aperture can open Photoshop files and work with them, but layering and Photoshop filters remain the province of the Adobe application.

Analysts don't see Aperture as a direct Photoshop competitor either, seeing Aperture as a 'workflow' app, while Photoshop is about tasks like compositing.

Analysis: Apple, as ever, picks its market niche and lines up its target with a killer app. But whereas FCP took on Premiere and beat it on quality, features and ease-of-use, Apple probably doesn't want to take Adobe on in its own back yard. After all, if it wants Photoshop, it can simply buy Adobe, lock, stock and barrel, with all that loose cash that lying around Cupertino.