{"id":23449,"date":"2025-12-26T16:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T00:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/?p=23449"},"modified":"2025-12-26T17:21:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T01:21:36","slug":"look-at-this-tell-me-photoshops-not-cooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/26\/look-at-this-tell-me-photoshops-not-cooked\/","title":{"rendered":"Look at this &#038; tell me Photoshop&#8217;s not cooked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sorry-not-sorry to be a bit provocative, but seriously, to highlight one of one million examples:<\/p>\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Testing fence removal on my son\u2019s photo using <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NanoBanana?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@NanoBanana<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChatGPTapp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@ChatGPTapp<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bfl_ml?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@bfl_ml<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re all impressive, but Nano tried to put jet engines on this prop plane, so I\u2019m giving this round to ChatGPT. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DOvZQLT5H5\">pic.twitter.com\/DOvZQLT5H5<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 John Nack (@jnack) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jnack\/status\/2003601093977387143?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 23, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n<p>And in a slightly more demanding case:<\/p>\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">For Christmas my wife requested a portrait of our coked-up puppy\u2014so say hello to my little friend: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/uyFfc7ZDzU\">pic.twitter.com\/uyFfc7ZDzU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 John Nack (@jnack) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jnack\/status\/2004323502254604368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 25, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n<p>For the latter, I used Photoshop to remove a couple of artifacts from the initial Scarface-to-puppy Nano Banana generation, and to resize the image to fit onto a canvas\u2014but geez, <strong>there&#8217;s almost no world where I&#8217;d now think to <em>start<\/em> in PS<\/strong>, as I would&#8217;ve for the last three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back in 2002, just after Photoshop godfather Mark Hamburg left the project in order to start what became Lightroom, he talked about how listening too closely to existing customers could backfire: they&#8217;ll always give you an endless list of nerdy feature requests, but in addressing those, you&#8217;ll get <strong>sucked up the complexity curve<\/strong> &amp; end up focusing on increasingly niche value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile disruptive competitors will <strong>simply discard &#8220;must-have&#8221; features<\/strong> (in the case of Lightroom, layers), as those had often proved to be irreducibly complex. iOS did this to macOS not by making the file system easier to navigate, but by simply omitting normal file system access\u2014and only later grudgingly allowing some of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steve Jobs famously talked about personal computers vs. mobile devices in terms of cars vs. trucks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Steve Jobs on the Post PC era\" width=\"604\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YfJ3QxJYsw8?start=18&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Obviously Photoshop (and by analogy PowerPoint &amp; Excel &amp; other &#8220;indispensable&#8221; apps) will stick around for those who genuinely need it\u2014but generative apps will do to Photoshop what (per Hamburg) Photoshop did to the Quantel Paintbox, i.e. <strong>shove it up into the tip of the complexity\/usage pyramid<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adobe will continue to gamely resist this by trying to make PS easier to use, which is fine (except of course where clumsy new affordances get in pros&#8217; way, necessitating a whole new &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/community.adobe.com\/t5\/photoshop-beta-discussions\/quiet-mode\/td-p\/15413847\">quiet mode<\/a>&#8221; just to STFU!). And\u2014more excitingly to guys like me\u2014they&#8217;ll keep incorporating genuinely transformative new AI tech, from image transformation to interactive lighting control &amp; more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, everyone sees what&#8217;s unfolding, and &#8220;You cannot stop it, you can only hope to contain it.&#8221; <em>Where we&#8217;re going, we won&#8217;t need roads.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry-not-sorry to be a bit provocative, but seriously, to highlight one of one million examples: Testing fence removal on my son\u2019s photo using @NanoBanana, @ChatGPTapp, and @bfl_ml.&nbsp; They\u2019re all impressive, but Nano tried to put jet engines on this prop plane, so I\u2019m giving this round to ChatGPT. pic.twitter.com\/DOvZQLT5H5 \u2014 John Nack (@jnack) December 23, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[66,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23449"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23452,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23449\/revisions\/23452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}