[hmurchison]

I think at this point only Apple could really develop a photo editing program that could get Adobe's attention.

And Lord how I wish they'd try. Not because I have any ill feeling towards Adobe but because having Adobe as the 800lb Gorilla of creative apps is frankly scary.

I remember back in the day when you had Photoshop duking it out with Live Picture and Macromedia's Xres. Those where fun times and Adobe busted it's arse to keep its lead. Who's going to push them now?

If I had my druthers Apple would be hopping into the fray with a Mac only version of a Pro image creation/editor. By staying Mac only they are assured that they wouldn't damage Adobe's frail ego and they could base such an app around OS X technologies.

I don't know enough about graphics to know where Photoshop is really lacking i'd certainly love to see the resolution independence that Live Picture had. I'd love to see core support for HDRI images (I think they are already supported in Core Image).

I think the big thing would be cool filters, extensible plugin support and excellent scripting. Make it handle square and round pixels with ease. It woud be fully supported by OpenGL 2.x and the previews would be almost always instantaneous.

There would be palettes but much work would be done with Heads Up Display panels that are contextual and very smart.

Video would be supported. If you wanted to drop in a Final Cut timeline and edit each individual frame that would be supported. The painting tools would rival Painter X.

And of course hundreds of things I've never thought about but would instantly need once announced. I'd love to see Apple take a whack at this.

Omni could support it with excellent add on tools.