Adobe Announces New Elements
Adobe has announced upcoming releases of Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0. It sure seems like each of the players with a less than $100 image editor are getting their new products out just in time for Christmas shopping.
That's right, get someone a digital camera or a camcorder and the software to edit their media. The real message is that there is a huge market for these categories of software.
So let's look at how Corel is going to address these markets. We'll start with image editing. I've mentioned in earlier posts that they have an abundance of image editors. What they don't seem to have is a clear marketing definition of which products are geared to what markets. I'm a Corel PHOTO-PAINT user. I really do love the product and it does a great job for me. What it doesn't have is a clear message that says it can be used for digital photographers. There is no RAW support and that is extremely important. It doesn't have a lot of the filters for correcting common digital image problems. Sure, a good artist can fix them, but why can't they include those filters if they already exist in other Corel products?
Paint Shop Pro is definitely the product that Corel pushes to the digital photography crowd. From the notes I've read so far, existing PSP users aren't very happy with the new features. This tells me that Corel is obviously targeting new users. If they were targeting existing users, they should have known that the new features wouldn't capture the market. This just baffles me since one of the marketing rules I've always heard is that it is much less expensive to keep existing customers than to gain new ones.
Now let's move on to editing videos. As of right now, Corel has no products that can truly work with video. Clearly that was their motivation for purchasing InterVideo/Ulead. Each of those companies offers a variety of products geared towards video editing and DVD mastering. What isn't evident is that the sale will be completed in time for Corel to get the products rebranded in time for the holidays. Or would it be better to keep the InterVideo and Ulead names on them since consumers have at least heard those names before.
All in all, I guess I end up asking more questions about these releases than I can find answers. What are your thoughts on this glut of mid-range image and video editing tools? Is Corel hitting the right markets or are their missing the boat? I really would love to hear what you think.
That's right, get someone a digital camera or a camcorder and the software to edit their media. The real message is that there is a huge market for these categories of software.
So let's look at how Corel is going to address these markets. We'll start with image editing. I've mentioned in earlier posts that they have an abundance of image editors. What they don't seem to have is a clear marketing definition of which products are geared to what markets. I'm a Corel PHOTO-PAINT user. I really do love the product and it does a great job for me. What it doesn't have is a clear message that says it can be used for digital photographers. There is no RAW support and that is extremely important. It doesn't have a lot of the filters for correcting common digital image problems. Sure, a good artist can fix them, but why can't they include those filters if they already exist in other Corel products?
Paint Shop Pro is definitely the product that Corel pushes to the digital photography crowd. From the notes I've read so far, existing PSP users aren't very happy with the new features. This tells me that Corel is obviously targeting new users. If they were targeting existing users, they should have known that the new features wouldn't capture the market. This just baffles me since one of the marketing rules I've always heard is that it is much less expensive to keep existing customers than to gain new ones.
Now let's move on to editing videos. As of right now, Corel has no products that can truly work with video. Clearly that was their motivation for purchasing InterVideo/Ulead. Each of those companies offers a variety of products geared towards video editing and DVD mastering. What isn't evident is that the sale will be completed in time for Corel to get the products rebranded in time for the holidays. Or would it be better to keep the InterVideo and Ulead names on them since consumers have at least heard those names before.
All in all, I guess I end up asking more questions about these releases than I can find answers. What are your thoughts on this glut of mid-range image and video editing tools? Is Corel hitting the right markets or are their missing the boat? I really would love to hear what you think.
posted by Foster D. Coburn III at
10:10 PM
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