Would the Linux world be better or worse off if PhotoShop were to be ported?
Speculation always has its risks, but I’d bet that the Linux community would be much better off with a port of PhotoShop. Having it would immediately open a lot of pre-press doors to the Linux platform, including ICC (International Color Consortium) calibration profiles and proprietary color systems (such as Pantone). Because Linux is an especially low cost, highly reliable, and flexible platform, these additional image handling features would attract a lot of people from the pre-press industry to our favorite platform. Furthermore, I think that once PhotoShop were available, many more pre-press professionals would see the value of interacting with the GIMP. The GIMP has greater flexibility, provides more built-in functionality, and costs $600 per license less than PhotoShop. I can imagine a design house’s workflow that does all the selections and compositing tasks in the GIMP, and only the final color adjustments in Photoshop. This could perhaps offer a significant economy in that onl
