There’s an interesting article on TechCrunch, saying that according to software usage tracking company Wakoopa, "women spend about twice the time in Photoshop than men." [Via]
I’m not sure how they arrived at this stat, and I don’t see evidence of a gender-based usage difference in Adobe’s internal research numbers. Here’s a funny one, though: women responding to those surveys seem more likely than men to have pirated Photoshop. In fact, whereas women comprise 46% of the legal responders, they comprise 64%–nearly two thirds–of the suspected pirates!
This finding prompted a chorus of "Aaarrghs!" from the women of Adobe Research, not to mention some ill-advised plays on the word "booty." ;-) [Via Claiborne Brown, Julie Baher, & Bryan Hughes]
Maybe women and men use Photoshop in equal numbers, but women spend more time doing the software equivalent of primping.
That’s right, I said it!
Hah! I suspect many of those women with pirate copies are actually cross-dressers!
We thought it was interesting too! The reason as to why this is I’ll just leave to the imagination of the interpreter. 🙂
If you really want to know more, drop me a mail!
This bears out what I’ve noticed from studying my 40K+ members. Men tend to have specific goals when using Photoshop (“how do I make photo X look like photo Y?”) while women tend to be more experimental (“what happens when I run this exact same image through every single artistic filter in every possible combination?”). The guys also focus more on people (particularly hot people), with the girls showing more interest in flowers, pets, events, etc.
This is a gross oversimplification, but it is something I have genuinely noticed.
Rob – That’s exactly what I was about to say… with a warning that I wasn’t a chauvinist — the joke’s just too obvious!
John sorry for this offtopic comment, but when’s AEFX CS3 update for leopard about to come?
Adobe said early december. Now it’s mid december.
Any idea?
[It’s due next week. –J.]
The reason might be that women love scrapbooking and men don’t do much of that. Scrapbooking is BIG – digital scrapbooking, that is. There is no better software on the planet for scrapbooking than… ta dum… Photoshop.
Maybe it’s men pirating the copies of Photoshop, and giving them to their girlfriends/wives as gifts?
The reason women spend more time doing these things is because we put more thought into how we want our pics. and scrapbook to look. We have the habit of wanting things to be as close to perfct as possible when it comes to having and sharing memories. We put more heart and thought in these things than men,not putting you down. We like for things to be wonderful and as perfect as possible.Men just really dont care as much,its a womans thing really. Hope it helps to put your wonderings to rest guys!!! Photoshop is the easiest thing to use for us women who want that as close to perfect as possible for our pics. and scrapbooking needs.