by Donald Wilson
If you're making the transition from a PC or Macintosh to the Silicon Graphics Indy workstation, you'll find an old friend on your new platform: Adobe Photoshop. The SGI port of Photoshop 2.5.1 for the Macintosh offers the same feature set as Photoshop for the Mac and for Windows, and it saves files in a format that is compatible with Photoshop on those desktop platforms. It even maintains Photoshop's open architecture, supporting accelerator boards and plug-ins.
So what's the big deal? Speed. Photoshop on the Indy offers a significant performance boost over the program's Mac and Windows versions: expect performance of many features to be twice as fast, although Adobe says some functions will be a startling ten times faster. And because the Indy is UNIX-based, Photoshop on SGI's machine can run simultaneously with other applications.
Just because you use Photoshop for the Mac or Windows doesn't mean you'll necessarily want to stick with it on the Indy. The biggest improvement resulting from the port is speed, yet the performance boost decreases when you run two or more applications at once. Furthermore, for the price, you ought to evaluate the competition before you open your wallet. The competition consists of native image editing programs that make full use of the UNIX operating system, giving you the ability to do things like open one image in two windows at once and make changes to both.
Finally, Adobe doesn't provide primary technical support for Photoshop for the Indy. Adobe anticipates that most tech-support questions will pertain more to problems with the SGI hardware and operating system than with Photoshop, so it's having distributors and retailers take first crack at users questions. Most retailers are knowledgeable about networking and the Indy and they've been trained by Adobe for Photoshop, but they may not be well-equipped to address image editing problems; if they can't help, you can talk directly to someone at Adobe.
If youre considering incorporating an Indy into your production stream, the platform gives you the speed you want. If you want seamless file compatibility and no learning curve, stick with Photoshop. But to benefit from all the Indy and UNIX have to offer, you would be better served by a native UNIX program.
