King of graphics making formal entry into Indonesia
King of graphics making formal entry into Indonesia
Zatni Arbi, Contributor, zatni@cbn.net.id
Come to think about it, it is quite amazing that a company with
only 4,000 people can set a bunch of industry standards in the
computer graphics world.
The San Jose-based Adobe Systems Inc. has done it, for sure.
Who has not heard of the software program called Photoshop? It
has been the de facto standard in the area of image and photo
editing. You do not deserve to be called a professional image
editor or graphics designer if you are not using Photoshop.
And, if you use your computer regularly, chances are you are
familiar with Adobe Acrobat Reader. A free software utility that
you can download from the Internet, it is what you need to read
any electronic document with the .PDF extension at the end of its
name. Adobe created the Portable Document Format (PDF) to enable
us to share electronic document files that we cannot modify -- if
we are not authorized to do so.
Going back further in history, one will recall ATM (Adobe Type
Manager). This was the utility that we had to use to incorporate
scalable fonts into Windows in order to achieve WYSIWIG ("What
You See Is What You Get"). Now that Windows uses TrueType fonts,
WYSIWYG is taken for granted and we no longer need ATM.
Nonetheless, in the early 1990s, prior to the arrival of
TrueType, ATM was another advance from Adobe.
The company also seems to have the tradition of swallowing up
its competitors, although not many people have seen it that way.
The company lets the acquired competing products live for some
time and then kills them altogether.
The acquisition of Aldus was a case in point. Back in the
1990s, I did a lot of desktop publishing using PageMaker. I spent
hundreds of hours learning to use the page layout program, which
was originally a product of Aldus. Adobe then bought Aldus.
Today, PageMaker no longer exists. In its place Adobe has
InDesign. The same fate happened to Aldus Freehand, a powerful
vector graphics creation and editing program that was left to die
after the acquisition and then replaced by the incumbent Adobe
Illustrator.
Today Adobe is in the process of acquiring Macromedia. This
time around, however, if the acquisition goes through, we can
expect more powerful design technology to emerge that can make
electronic communication even more stunning.
Adobe has to clear a lot of legal barriers before this can
happen, however, because it will certainly create a monopoly in
the graphics industry.
The good news for our graphics designers came last July 27.
Adobe announced that it had appointed Tech Pacific Indo
Informatika as its first distributor here in Indonesia. The
appointment marked the company's official entry into Indonesia,
where its software products -- especially Photoshop -- have been
pirated and used extensively, even by graphics and image
professionals.
A Platform Player
At the announcement, Adobe also launched its Creative Suite 2
in Indonesia. Like Microsoft Office, Creative Suite represents a
bundling of software programs that are closely integrated with
one another.
Two Creative Suite 2.0 offerings are available -- the Standard
and the Premium versions. The US$899 Standard version consists
of Photoshop CS2, InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, Version Cue CS2,
Adobe Bridge and Adobe Stock Photos. Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and GoLive
CS2 are thrown into the Premium version, which fetches a list
price of $1,199.
We still can buy the stand-alone Photoshop, although the name
will be Photoshop CS2. We will no longer see the conventional
version-number, such as Adobe Photoshop 9.0 or 10.
Instead, we will see Photoshop CS3, CS4 and so on. Raymond
Lee, Adobe's Group Manager for South East Asia, explained during
the launch that the use of CS actually indicated that his company
did not consider itself a software company. "We are now a
platform company," he said.
By providing a suite for creative works, Adobe has created a
platform that enables integration between the components.
Adobe has three segments of users in mind -- enterprise,
professionals and video enthusiasts. Companies in the enterprise
segment, especially those in the finance, services and insurance
businesses, have their own requirements, which usually center on
the communication of reports, etc.
The professionals are those who use the software to produce
creative works, including ads, brochures and other marketing
collateral. The enthusiasts are the consumers who want to play
around with the images and videos that they have captured using
their own digital or video cameras.
What I found more impressive is how Adobe has kept up with the
trends. In the 1980s, desktop publishing was booming. In the
1990s, the focus of design activities was the Web. Today, the
emphasis is on mobile and network publishing. In each era, this
company has always offered the tools and features needed to make
the task of publishing easier and more manageable.
Mac users have to be careful, though, because the new suite
works only on Mac OS X. On the other hand, Adobe has developed
Photoshop for Linux and Acrobat for Linux for those who choose
the Open Source platform.
Undeterred by Piracy
I liked a statement made by Raymond Lee: "If you make money
using our software, then you must pay us," he said. That was a
very simple, fair and also realistic approach to software
licensing. "You use it for hobby, we won't bother so much," he
added, with a smile.
This is a very down-to-earth approach to a market like ours,
where software piracy is still ranked one of the highest in the
world.
Along with the announcement of Creative Suite 2.0, Adobe has
also introduced Adobe Acrobat 7.0. It offers a lot of new
features that focus on the creation of intelligent documents. A
30-day Trial Version was distributed during the press conference
(you can also download the files from www.adobe.com). I plan to
run it and see for myself how powerful and useful those new
features are.