5.20.2005

A new marriage....

For visual artists working in the digital environment, last month brought startling tech sector news of the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, a marriage of complementary visual imaging giants that have for years been rivals on several levels. While Adobe has dominated the creative imaging world of print via the indomitable industry standard image editor Photoshop and it's wide reaching file standard, pdf (or Portable Document Format), Macromedia has been seen as the force in online imaging through it's Flash technology and Macromedia web authoring software. Between the two, just about every aspect of creative imaging is covered and will now become a blended family of gigantic proportion. It will be fascinating to see how the marriage is consummated, which "children" will flourish in the new blended home, which will morph into even higher form and which will quietly disappear. Surely we with an interest in visual imagery will be in for some surprises along the way...

Read more at Adobe's site. There are also good overviews at the usual tech media outlets including: CNET.com, eweek.com