[NTLUG:Discuss] Photoshop on Linux -- Photoshop in _production_ at Disney

[Bryan J. Smith]

Ralph Miller wrote;  
> I've been told that a copy of Photoshop has been reverse engineered to
> operate on Linux.  Supposedly it is available for downloading at no
> cost.  Anyone know where this is?

- Standard/Commerceware _never_ "reverse engineered" into Freedomware

Er, um, to start, the Freedomware community is _extremely_respectful_ of
IP.  There would _never_ be a Commerceware/Standardware GUI application
that is "reverse engineered" for Linux.  The Linux version would
_always_ be a new, original, "clean room" design.  The only time the
Freedomware world uses "reverse engineering" is for either network or
file format compatibility.

- Photoshop in _production_ on Linux at Disney since 2003

Secondly, while I was at Disney**, the animation department started
running Photoshop on Linux en-masse.  They modified and customized
Crossover Office to run it fairly well.  The reason?  _Everything_else_
Disney uses, from Houdini to Maya to RenderMan is available for Linux,
because Linux is _the_ standard for the animation/CGI industry.  So
Photoshop was the _only_ application that they didn't have available for
Linux -- but they made the switch anyway, and the hacks to Crossover to
make it happen.

IMHO, Adobe has _no_excuse_ not to have a native Linux port of at least
Photoshop, the critical mass is there.  I heard Adobe _may_ be readying
both Adobe Acrobat (the full Distiller/etc...) and Photoshop in a native
Linux port.  But as the #2 or #3 software company, they are weary of
pissing Microsoft off -- many companies (e.g., Adobe, Intuit, etc...)
saw what happened when Corel did so a few years back.

  http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1210083,00.asp  

[ **NOTE:  I didn't work in the animation department -- a lot of which
is out in Burbank and not in Orlando (although some of it is here too). 
But I maintained a secure file transfer server were these files came
through.  I was shocked to talk to one guy who was now running the
so-called "banned" Linux platform at Disney (a colleague of mine, and a
long-time Disney employee who can get away with it, even "grilled"
Disney's CIO in one of their informal "roundtable" on why Disney was
continued "no Linux" stance).  Long story short, Disney and ILM were
probably the _last_two_ animation studios to switch over to Linux. 
Disney _finally_ "caved in" when _all_ the programs ran on Linux, _all_
competiting houses were running it, and it could save over 6 figures in
licensing costs alone, let alone the fact that there was _better_
support for the Linux versions of other programs. ]

- "Original" Bitmap, 35mm-oriented Editing Suites for Linux

There are two major bitmap and 35mm-oriented editing suites for Linux.

                   The GIMP:  http://www.gimp.org
CinePaint (fka "Film Gimp"):  http://cinepaint.sourceforge.net 

The GIMP 2.0, released just a couple of months ago, now supports CMYK
and other goodies that are far more professional in quality.

CinePaint is designed to support more motion picture-oriented interfaces
with upto 32-bits of color per channel (upto 128-bit RGBA), Kodak, ILM,
Maya and other formats.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. -- Engineer, Technologist, School Teacher
b.j.smith at ieee.org