It seems that news of the demo I did the other day (a repeat of what we’d shown publicly three weeks earlier) is bouncing all around the online tech press. People are excited that the Photoshop team is exploring ways to make the app feel faster and smoother, and that’s all good. What’s irritating, though, is just how much bogus info is getting invented, passed around, and swallowed without question.
Gizmodo is repeating info found on a site called TG Daily, stating that "Photoshop CS4" (a term that I’ve never heard anyone from Adobe use publicly) "is expected to be released on October 1." Uhh… expected by whom? And based on what?
I didn’t say anything about schedule. In fact, I never said that any of this stuff is promised to go into any particular version of Photoshop. Rather, as with previous installments, it’s a technology demonstration of some things we’ve got cooking–nothing more.
Doesn’t matter, though: Someone pulled a date apparently out of thin air, and now everyone who can copy & paste is dutifully repeating it. The fish story grows with the telling, too. In addition to repeating the date, Electronista is inventing new details (e.g. "CS3 has already had limited support for graphics processing units (GPUs) for certain filters"; sorry, no; "An upcoming wave of video cards with special physics processing will also help, Adobe explains"; nope, didn’t say that; and more). Where do people get this stuff? It’s particularly annoying to see made-up info presented as a response from Adobe–to questions that were never asked. (Contacting Adobe PR, or me directly, to confirm some detail isn’t exactly tough.)
I’m not feeling a lot of confidence in the tech press these days. People just make up whatever they want, creating a bunch of expectations & misperceptions that people like me have to try to unravel. There’s no disincentive to doing so: the sites still get their ad impressions, and clearly bloggers and readers are all too happy to take what they read at face value.
I don’t know what to tell you, as the quest for ad bucks is eroding journalistic standards across the board. "Caveat lector," and I’ll keep trying to share actually legitimate information here.
J.
PS–I found this warez link kind of hilarious. Not only are people inventing product info in order to entice you to download a bunch of unknown executable code onto your machine (something from the Eliot Spitzer Memorial Hall Of Unprotected Terrible Ideas); now they’re actually using Photoshop to design fake Photoshop packaging! (Screenshot here in case the shady server disappears.)
Well CS4 sounds like the logical suffix to use in a next version of Photoshop, seeing as how it progressed from CS, CS2 and now CS3.
[You’re missing the point, which is that I repeatedly and clearly stated that this stuff was a technology preview, and that it had no shipping date whatsoever attached to it. Unfortunately people getting paid a couple of bucks per post couldn’t care less about nuance, and they feel free to fabricate whatever info they’d like. It’s weak sauce, though it wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t generate bogus expectations among customers–something I then have to try to sort out. –J.]
I visit several forums and blogs and its always interesting how things that someone saw on another forum start to take on a life of their own. One of the problems of electronic media and mass information. I take most things with a grain of salt but I feel for the people and businesses that have to deal with the BS on a daily basis. Terry
John, in this PDF http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/pdfs/ps_cs3_64-bitsupport_FAQ.pdf, Adobe is talking about “performance gains in the next release of Photoshop” and “foundational improvements—for example, greater use of graphics processors”.
So please tell us the PDF is true and bring the GPU power to CS 4 😉
Got to agree with you mate.
It gets to the point that you really dont want to blog anything for fear of being miss-quoted.
As for the ‘warez’ site thing. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t sop tragic!
Don’t let it get you down mate.
Glenn Williams
tinylion development UK
flex-ria.com
Oh typical, the Tech World has never had the bread and butter of strong journalists.
It’s a damned shame to go from misinterpretation to downright laziness. This isn’t journalism anymore, it’s merely popular blogs of utmost speculation.
it must be very frustrating for you guys, but honestly – who believes these rumour sites anyway?
everybody with the slightest understanding of technology development or project management would understand, that a new version of ANY software doesn’t “just happen over night”. i even get the point and i am just a designer and photographer.
not to mention any marketing sense: IF a major change or version would be released soon it would be the developers marketing strategy to share the information.
1+1 still makes 2, even in our networked digital world, and whoever believes everything these rumours blogs and sites publish should engage the top few inches first.
having said all of that, i’d like to order cs4 please, shipment next week will be just fine. thanks… oh, could you please build in a bit more intelligence, because it would be nicel if photoshop would do all the retouching for me while i take my kid to the beach. perfect, thanks!
Thanks for the info…I do have ask one thing…please tell me we will have the rotating canvas feature mentioned in the article in the next version of PS.
The fake Photoshop CS4 Box seems to be a German Video Training DVD.
I recognized it by the smoothed area in the label.
[Good scheisse! –J.]
Who do you expect us to believe, the press or some guy that simply has a nack for words and happens to blog with an Adobe url? 🙂
[Those guys are notorious charlatans–“immature,” unprofessional, and all that (as demonstrated through customer engagement over a holiday weekend). Creeps! –J.]
I’m surprised they’re not speculating on CS5-7 and 9 (because everyone knows CS8 will be a marketing release, and thus not worth the purchase price, though the direct eyeball connection will cause some buzz).
[Whatever good things we do, I’m sure our continued inattention to the Note Paper filter will be considered grounds for crucifixion. (I’m kidding; no one should hyperventilate.) –J.]
On the Warez posting: on close examination the graphic looks very much like a *book* mockup. I’m guessing a confused someone pulled it out of a book proposal and mistook it for/misrepresented it as Photoshop CS4. Pretty badly, too.
Ah-ha! I was wondering about all this. Especially when the internet bubbling rumours have turned into foaming in the mouth.
It, of course, will be interesting to see what finally makes it into CS Next (am I allowed to call it that?). I’m wondering what the effect of giving details before release has on the previous(currently being sold) version of the software.
Like knowing that Lightroom 2 has 64-bit functionality and enhanced features puts people off buying Lightroom 1 knowing that they’ll soon have to hand over an upgrade fee?
“And based on what?” – Statistics?
They suck–this is not breaking news. However, I think 1 October is a perfectly good guess as the product cycles have historically and officially (well, stated publicly) been on an 18 month cycle. Sure, saying you said something you didn’t sounds frustrating… but to say “is expected” seems totally reasonable to me.
I really think what you ought to do is invest in having your public comments transcribed. It’d save a lot of such arguments and also provide people a chance to read (way faster than watching) what was said. Have you considered what it would take to do this?
Well, Jack, you should be at least proud to say they are using Adobe’s software at its finest! LOL!
I can only hope that the horrible interface shown in their screenshot won’t appear in the next version of Photoshop, either.
Even Microsoft has finally understood that MDI was a very bad idea.
Ha! You Adobe guys actually have a sense of humor. Nice! 🙂
Although Adobe hasn’t used the name Photoshop CS4 publicly, that’s exactly what it’s called on the system that is used in the demo.
“I don’t know what to tell you, as the quest for ad bucks is eroding journalistic standards across the board.”
Uh, you think that’s something new. It always happened whenever advertising pays the bills. It’s just easier to find it now, with the aid of search engines.
I fear for the chilling effect this may have on Adobe and other developers. No tech demos or any sneak previews until the product launches. I guess this is why Apple is so secretive.
John,
I am running a site “called TG Daily” and just came across your post. It is unfortunate you chose this route of communication and did not contact me directly about what you are unhappy about. Let me comment on just one claim you made here – that CS4 is “a term that I’ve never heard anyone from Adobe use publicly”. As far as I can remember, this term has been around for a while, but perhaps Cnet, CRN and Macworld are more credible than TG Daily to you?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9909725-39.html
http://www.macworld.com/article/132810/2008/04/photoshop64.html
http://www.crn.com/software/207001885
Contact me, if you want to discuss this any further. I have contacted your PR department and you can find my contact on our site.
Wolfgang
John,
I am running a site “called TG Daily” and just came across your post. It is unfortunate you chose this route of communication and did not contact me directly about what you are unhappy about. Let me comment on just one claim you made here – that CS4 is “a term that I’ve never heard anyone from Adobe use publicly”. As far as I can remember, this term has been around for a while, but perhaps Cnet, CRN and Macworld are more credible than TG Daily to you?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9909725-39.html
http://www.macworld.com/article/132810/2008/04/photoshop64.html
http://www.crn.com/software/207001885
Contact me, if you want to discuss this any further. I have contacted your PR department and you can find my contact on our site.
Wolfgang
Well said John. As always, your honesty is deeply appreciated.
Journalistic standards have fallen so far in the past 20 years… although thats partly due to the rise of the internet. In press rooms, they’ve always been on tight time constraints, and with the instantaneous nature of the internet, those constraints are even more frantic (frentic?).
That said, there simply is no excuse for bad fact checking.
Correction: I was called CS4 at Photoshop world. And, if i remember correctly there was even a graphic at Photoshop world that said CS4 on it . . . just saying.
[Hmm–I wasn’t aware of that, and if that’s what anyone from Adobe said, it was a mistake. At the analysts briefing in which I participated (with this same demo) a couple of weeks back, we showed a slide saying “CS.next,” and that’s the same slide that the NVIDIA presenter used to introduce my demo on Thursday. So, it’s true that I haven’t heard anyone from Adobe talk publicly about “CS4” (or 5, or 33.3), but I can’t guarantee it hasn’t (mistakenly) happened. –J.]
Well journos screwed up ad now they are trying to cover themselves by blaiming some other site who made the same mistake some time ago… what ever happened to good journalism?
That aside that as a cool demo, I hope you guys will be able to get this to the market as soon as possible… Care to elaborate if integrated graphics will also be the part of this deal or it’s only for the high end boys?
I already download CS4 from the site you mention and is awsome… I am running it with my Mac G3 Beige, and run very fast, very responsive… and use only 16MB of RAM under Mac OS 8.
Thanks!
jajaja
[I’m running it on a Speak-n-Spell, but I can’t wait to integrate it with a Colecovision. Also, it makes delicious waffles. –J.]
watch and listen and believe… it’s called “CS4” here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3ybu4YmdNE
[Gah–shows what I know! I didn’t attend that show and didn’t participate in the creation of the slides and demo. Thanks for the correction. –J.]
So one of the myriad of suppositions has some basis?
Law-Of-Averages-Journalism.
/sigh
There’s nothing wrong with someone posting up “I reckon CS4 will be released in October because {insert reasoning}” or “I reckon this recently displayed technology will/will not be available in the next release because {insert reasoning}”.
It’s highly objectionable when opinion is presented as fact.
[Bingo. –J.]
To be fair, it’s by no means just IT journalists who fall into this trap – it’s almost de rigueur these days 🙁
Being a journalist myself, I have to hang my head just a little bit. It’s an unfortunate part of the First Amendment that anyone can legitimately call himself or herself a journalist. They are free to do so simply because there’s no way for the government to regulate such a thing Constitutionally.
So it comes down to the public having to voice their outrage at poor journalistic standards, at least with those bloggers who claim to be journalists. Hold their feet to the fire. Make them sweat. Don’t let them get away with it. Unfortunately, sites like Gizmodo simply ban people from commenting at all if those commenters dare to criticize them. I’m amongst those proudly banned from that site for calling them to task for their antics at CES.
As readers of the tech press, we all have to keep in mind what Walter Lippmann said. “The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account.”
I think we can all put all debate about whether “CS4” is the suffix to use for the next version to rest, cos Adobe is offering Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Soundbooth CS4 betas for download: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_dreamweavercs4
[I wasn’t saying that the next version of Photoshop would or would not be called “CS4”; I was saying that I hadn’t demoed anything under that heading, and I mistakenly thought that no one else at Adobe had, either. –J.]
Hi John
As well as a director and animator, I also write a monthly column for UK magazine Computer Arts. This month I’ll be tackling the growing trend for GPU acceleration in design related apps. I’d love to ask you a couple of questions in the next day or so (deadlines, don’t you love ’em!) so that I ensure I get my facts straight! If you have a chance, please email me at jason@wyldstallyons.com
Thanks!
I think the statement “The package is expected to be released on October 1.” Is not only reasonable, but not inaccurate. I mean, it doesn’t even imply that this is the official launch date or that Adobe quoted this date.
I think if Adobe were to avoid all press (sort of like Apple) then there would be different results (mainly MORE speculation but few people inferring the information comes from Adobe). But, the tact Adobe uses is to pre-release information… seems to be expected and, so far, I haven’t seen anything totally whacked.
well three cs4 betas went up today so they must have been on to something.
[My beef was with speculation being presented as fact, and with people simply repeating what others had written. –J.]
granted, hey wheres our PS CS4 beta?
😉
“well three cs4 betas went up today so they must have been on to something”.
I think the relevant thing about these CS4 betas is that they’re outstanding (especially Soundbooth) rather than how they relate to that article’s speculations.
If you visit Adobe’s Soundbooth forum, you’ll see a ton of user requests. And you’ll also see that the SB CS4 beta addresses many or most of them in an impressive way.
Yum-o! Dreamweaver, my favorite! (It’s what I use every week to write the EKB News Monitor, a site about Dish Network satellite news.)
I will have to play with Dreamweaver 10 (after all, CS3 = 9.0) to see what works well. As for me, I love to hand-write my code. (Helps reduce computer error problems in the end, too.)
“[I’m running it on a Speak-n-Spell, but I can’t wait to integrate it with a Colecovision. Also, it makes delicious waffles. –J.]”
Sign me up! Finally, Adobe has it right! Photoshop: Colecovision Edition (aka PS: CE)! Where else can I play Space Fury, edit photos, and make waffles?
“I was saying that I hadn’t demoed anything under that heading, and I mistakenly thought that no one else at Adobe had, either.”
woah, these words deserve a sticky on this blog!
Any chance for a public Photoshop CS4 beta?
haha – I did not mention release vehicles or version numbers, did not indicate that features x, y and z would be in any release vehicle, simply gave a technology demonstration. Sounds like somebody is trying to keep the finance weenies from coming unhinged. 🙂
Interesting blog. Tom’s Guide (TG) has a blog of their own up about this. Two things that are pretty interesting:
-they apparently have notes from the presentation which is where they got these facts from
-the fact that you’ve chosen to blog about your disappointment with them instead of contacting them directly and send out a Press Release stating that they misquoted you.
The Tom’s sites in general have shown a tremendous amount of integrity with their reporting over the last 3 years (since I started visiting their site) and it’s only getting better. So I find it a bit odd that they would make all of this up. In either case, without official documents or links to Adobe’s site, most of their visitors know that this information can change at any moment since everything is in the alpha stages.
If you want to see REAL weak journalism, then I’d say take a look at the reviews on Extreme Tech.
John –
Sounds like you DID mention release dates, and this “technology” may not be CS4.. but it WILL be in there sooner or later…
[I have no recollection at all of mentioning any dates, and I have no idea why I would have done so. –J.]
You (& Adobe) are coming off as real lame, unfriendly & arrogant… hostile toward tech community…
why?
[I just asked that people do a little more fact checking before posting. Members of the press contact us constantly with questions, and we always try to provide useful responses within timeframes that meet their deadlines. –J.]
Here is how I see it:
1. NVIDIA rushed to promote itself (demoting Intel/AMD at the same time) using someone else’s demo.
2. TGDaily rushed to provide exclusive coverage of the event without checking with Adobe.
Result was that public now has certain expectations about next CS product from Adobe. Those expectations will affect product sales if they are not met.
So, TGDaily and NVIDIA did PR damage to Adobe with their questionable work ethics.
I side with John and Adobe.
John, you should have clarified that GPU support exists in some 3rd party plugins, just not in Adobe’s own plugins.
It’s a good way to stir up controversy over the CS4 release. Get some FREE publicity over nothing.
If you’re that upset over this, you should wait for NVDIA to release the videotape of your talk and post it on YouTube. Until then, just rant in your shower about nothing.
I have not read anything on TG Daily that is false or has not been proven under whats currently available, check youtube.com or even adobe.com. you jumped the gun with your rant, you gotta commuicate better with your comrades…
[Sorry, but where is it you see Adobe people talking about a shipping date for the next version of the Creative Suite? –J.]
Phillip Kerman said:
“I think the statement “The package is expected to be released on October 1.” Is not only reasonable, but not inaccurate. I mean, it doesn’t even imply that this is the official launch date or that Adobe quoted this date.”
I disagree. This is where I think the bar has been lowered.
Who expects that to be the shipping or release date? It evens gives a specific date within October. On the back of quoting (correctly) other things that Adobe did say, it gives the impression that the date is official. If it had said, “Based on previous release cycles, we expect to Adobe to release this in October” that would have been acceptable. It would plainly state that it is speculation and give the basis for that speculation.
Sorry, but it’s lazy to throw in opinion mixed with fact and not clearly distinguish between the two. With web based reporting there’s also the problem of mirroring and straight copying which removes the publisher even further from the source, meaning if there is a correct or clarification later such an amendment may not propagate down the line.
Finally, what this ends up doing is setting false expectations which end up helping no one.
We all like to hear the latest gossip, but I’d rather it was clearly presented as such than piggy-backed on real information in what appears to be an attempt to add legitimacy through association.
maybe they are basing it off of the expiration date built into the betas. Thats how it was figured out with CS3.
There is a nice little item on CS4 for the photo downloader…
http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Bridge/2.0/WSEC378273-AF69-4a1e-9CD8-108420C556ED.html
It says CS4 in the image but cs3 in the text…
John,can you comment on http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/pdfs/ps_cs3_64-bitsupport_FAQ.pdf
It clearly states that the next Photoshop version will have “greater use of graphics processor”
Okay, I’ll modify my opinion slightly… that is, I agree it’s sloppy. But, I’ll stick with my opinion that it’s not very far off fact and I personally accept that most journalism is only some percentage accurate… say 80%. Whether that’s acceptable or not is not terribly important–that’s just the way it is.
“I don’t know what to tell you, as the quest for ad bucks is eroding journalistic standards across the board.”
Most of what people are saying (and perhaps repeating incorrectly) is due to excitement. There are a few major sites which gain revenue from advertising (they’ll gain it regardless anyways) but the majority of the repeats found throughout the web are simply people getting excited about ‘potential’ features.
The community as a whole is looking for a speed bump. Adobe was on the right-track with CS2 and x64 support but got way off track in CS3. Opening a 50mb file is just simply a bear now as many people can attest to.
If Adobe was to do something ‘right’ the next go around, they will support x64 AND GPUs for handling large datasets.
If anything, this ‘reporting’ is just simply what image professionals wish to see in a future release and Adobe would be smart in sticking to that.
I think these articles have most of this correct, and the counter you have presented is misinformed as to the video releases.
Seems a bit of an over-reaction for what seems to be obvious slips of the tongue. The counterpoint is you say it’s not Oct (Ok, but how is anyone to know other than Adobe folks, who could now make it Sept or Nov just to save face), and not necessarily CS4 despite all the preview stuff that says CS4, ends up like Vista/Longhorn where some apps still call it the codename even though it can be changed to whatever shortly before going RTM.
Seems like semantics to me. I’d prefer to just have people focusing on finally leveraging the power of GPGPU computing. It’s obvious being on top has let people lose focus on what’s important. I don’t care what they report, I care about what you guys deliver.
I couldn’t fit my thoughts here so I just posted to my blog: http://www.campphotoshop.com/Photoshop-CS4-is-everywhere
Make the windows on the mac version native again, I don’t have any desire to resize them the tedious way you do on windows.
I hope this version will be fully multi-lingual like all the Mac OS X native applications !
It means multi-lingual in the interface and multi-lingual in the use with support for RTL languages …
miffy said:
Well CS4 sounds like the logical suffix to use in a next version of Photoshop, seeing as how it progressed from CS, CS2 and now CS3.
I remember back before Creative Suite 1.0 came out how everyone was talking up Photoshop 8 and there were pre-release images floating around then. I know the verswion # was 8.x but still. The wonders of Photoshop.
Anyway…
“and clearly bloggers and readers are all too happy to take what they read at face value.”
Personally – since I know where to find the source – I don’t start making up rumors until after I’ve read your comments. Kidding.
I figure when it comes to PS News – whether I like what I hear or not – I’ll go with what you say about it.
Thank you John for clarifying the mentioned post at TG Daily.
I’m a little bit surprised that the whole discussion here concentrated around names and dates. Much more interesting is the idea of using GPGPU in future versions of Photoshop. Could you give a more detailed information on this subject? Is it going to be NVIDIA CUDA? If so, then what makes Adobe confident about this technology? Is Adobe going to provide customer support for GPU owners? What are real benefits of using GPU?
Or maybe the whole news about the GPU usage is just a fantasy?
[It’s not a fantasy, and we’re laying groundwork for more extensive GPU usage in the future. I can’t say much more right now. –J.]
lol this is funny. the comments are far funnier though.
& about the whole cs4. when i read that line, i just thought “oh well, he said it wasnt used publicly, maybe it was used privately”
Since it now looks like it will be “CS4”, and “October 1” will be the date, perhaps you could be less of a pompous arse when you criticize media that either know more inside info than you do, or are less inclined to disinformation than you are. Thank you.
[Bite me, anonymous troll. I never said anything about when the product would ship. I took issue with irresponsible journalists who either fabricate information or who slavishly repeat what others have fabricated. Do try to keep up. –J.]
I hope this version will be fully multi-lingual like all the Mac OS X native applications !
It means multi-lingual in the interface and multi-lingual in the use with support for RTL languages …
Really. This is totally lame, you (John) did not do all YOUR research before running up half cocked against TG Daily. And you did it underhandedly in your blog instead of contacting the publication and author in an honest effort to correct the confusion. You say you are easy to get a hold of, and yet you don’t bother to the same for others. Your unwarranted attack on TG Daily merely tarnishes your and Adobe’s reputation.
[I’m not sure why you are commenting on this now. I already expressed regret 5 months back, and both the TG Daily guys and I moved on a long time ago. –J.]
Got to agree with you mate.
It gets to the point that you really dont want to blog anything for fear of being miss-quoted.
As for the ‘warez’ site thing. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t sop tragic!
Don’t let it get you down mate..
On the Warez posting: on close examination the graphic looks very much like a *book* mockup. I’m guessing a confused someone pulled it out of a book proposal and mistook it for/misrepresented it as Photoshop CS4. Pretty badly, too.
“and clearly bloggers and readers are all too happy to take what they read at face value.”
Personally – since I know where to find the source – I don’t start making up rumors until after I’ve read your comments. Kidding.
I figure when it comes to PS News – whether I like what I hear or not – I’ll go with what you say about it.
nice post