Corel Closing Minnesota Office
Corel recently announced that they would be closing their office in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. They labeled it their "digital imaging facility" but the reality is that it was the former home of JASC, the makers of Paint Shop Pro. Further in the announcement it says that development of the digital imaging products would now be handled in offices in Silicon Valley and China.
Some people took this as really bad news. My initial thought was just the opposite. So I'll pass along my thoughts and you are free to comment with your own thoughts.
Corel owns too many image editing products. Paint Shop Pro and Picture Publisher are aimed at photo enthusiasts and well for under $100. PHOTO-PAINT is bundled with CorelDRAW and is not sold separately. The package is targeted toward graphics professionals. Then there is Corel Painter which is targeted towards fine artists. If we really dig, we can probably find a couple of more that Corel has sold over the years.
Realistically there should be no more than three and probably only two. To make it better for users, there should be the full PHOTO-PAINT and there should be a "lite" version sold to enthusiasts just as Adobe does with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Since Corel acquired JASC three years ago, there has been a complete disconnect between developers of Paint Shop Pro and the CorelDRAW suite. I'm not sure that moving development outside of Minnesota will improve the situation, but it can't be any worse either.
The upside is that Corel saves a lot of money by closing the office. We can only hope they use the money saved to improve communication between development teams and most importantly, for marketing!
Some people took this as really bad news. My initial thought was just the opposite. So I'll pass along my thoughts and you are free to comment with your own thoughts.
Corel owns too many image editing products. Paint Shop Pro and Picture Publisher are aimed at photo enthusiasts and well for under $100. PHOTO-PAINT is bundled with CorelDRAW and is not sold separately. The package is targeted toward graphics professionals. Then there is Corel Painter which is targeted towards fine artists. If we really dig, we can probably find a couple of more that Corel has sold over the years.
Realistically there should be no more than three and probably only two. To make it better for users, there should be the full PHOTO-PAINT and there should be a "lite" version sold to enthusiasts just as Adobe does with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Since Corel acquired JASC three years ago, there has been a complete disconnect between developers of Paint Shop Pro and the CorelDRAW suite. I'm not sure that moving development outside of Minnesota will improve the situation, but it can't be any worse either.
The upside is that Corel saves a lot of money by closing the office. We can only hope they use the money saved to improve communication between development teams and most importantly, for marketing!
posted by Foster D. Coburn III at
9:36 AM
2 Comments:
The news is worse than good but less than bad. It is a first and necessary step toward editor consolidation. The second step will be the indicator of a true direction or just another fake. (American Football Analogy)
Where Corel does business is of no concern to me. I have to admit, however, that I was saddened when Jasc was swallowed up by Corel.
I use CorelDraw exclusively for Vector drawing and document layout, but Corel Photo Paint (I am now using X3) is really hard for me to use. For bitmap editing and manipulation I still use my trusty old Jasc Paint Shop Pro 6. The features may be limited, but the interface is much more intuitive and accessible than either PhotoPaint or post Corel PSP.
Just my $.02 worth.
Tom Weeks
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