Apple Launches Creative Suite - Is Photoshop Doomed?

Yesterday, Apple made a big announcement - they've launched a 'Creative Suite' which bundles lots of their existing apps and some new ones together as either a stand alone or combined offer available as single one time purchase (yay!) or subscription.

I started researching what this meant for us photographers. answer is..something big is likely happening and coming shortly!

The suite has Pixelmator which is a Photoshop alternative and potentially going to take it on as a direct competitor. PSLR is somewhat overpriced (IMHO). As a landscape photographer, I use about 10% of it, I want a reduced subscription rate or Pixelmator could tempt me - does anyone have experience of it?

What the Apple Suite doesn't have is a pro-sumer photo app dedicated specifically to pics and editing, like Lightroom. But that's surely coming; Apple bought Photomator too and that should fill the void (and maybe bring back the much loved Aperture) to offer photo file management (like LR/Bridge-which Affinity Photo doesn't, annoyingly), RAW editing and then the advanced adjustments we want (like PS) if you take the image into Pixelmator like LR users do with PS.

The market is changing a lot with Affinity being free and Apple owning/launching Pixelmator. A LR style photo app is the only one not currently in the new Creative Suite . So its surely coming - its not a complete ’suite’ if you don't have this type of app after all because none of these offer:

-Cataloging / asset management
-non-destructive RAW workflow
-collections + ratings + metadata
-structured file worksflow (import → cull → edit → export → archive)

Which is the reason LR persists (and my old fashioned Bridge/PS workflow) despite competition.

The only reason I dont just use Lightroom and drop the fee for PS too is because of the workflow I have developed around Tony Kuyper's Luminosity Mask plug in. But LR has increasingly good luminosity selections, so does Affinity and i imagine also Pixelmator.

So I think Adobe’s days as the dominant photo software is coming under threat. Who knows, maybe it will force them to drop their prices back to something more reasonable. Or maybe these new offers from Apple (and Affinity) will simply be cheaper and as good/better.

We'll have to wait and see over the coming weeks what happens with the Creative Suite in terms of releasing a LR type app and how that shapes up to know where we might go next. Price will be a big factor as well as functionality and I'm seriously 'subscription fatigued' these days...

And in the end, I got bored of trying to figure out the pros and cons and just felt so much better when I looked at some more Greece pics from the last workshop to share!