John Nack: ‘So Long and Thanks for All the Pixels’

John Nack on Mark Hamburg (long-time Photoshop architect, lead developer/designer of Lightroom) leaving Adobe for Microsoft:

Mark is not going to go work on other digital imaging tools. After 17+ years of driving Photoshop and subsequently Lightroom, he’s looking for a complete change of pace and wants to work on operating system technologies related to user experience. Given that Mark has always been a huge Mac guy (developing Lightroom first on the Mac, etc.), it’s kind of a Nixon-goes-to-China moment.

Nack then deftly deflates this jacktastic report from Mary Jo Foley that Hamburg is going to work on “SmartFlow”, a supposed Lightroom/Aperture competitor she says Microsoft is working on. Think about it — if Hamburg wanted to work on photo library/imaging tools, wouldn’t he continue to lead Lightroom — an app whose UI and (very interesting, very original) internal architecture he completely oversaw from its inception?

★ Wednesday, 30 April 2008