Pretty much off-topic, but I thought it was interesting: a Senior Developer in the Adobe Photoshop team explains why they won't port Photoshop to Linux:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/487814?start=0&tstart=0

Summary:

- Some technical issues (color management, printing support, font management, tablet support). None of them sound to me like a serious impediment for a company like Adobe.

- People who want/need to use Photoshop use Windows or Mac. Even if they prefer Linux. Photoshop is more important than anything else, so they will use Photoshop on a toaster if Adobe says Photoshop will now be available only for toasters.

pgquiles wrote:- Some technical issues (color management, printing support, font management, tablet support). None of them sound to me like a serious impediment for a company like Adobe.

You mean the same Adobe that said it was technically impossible to do hardware acceleration of Flash on Linux, shortly before the gnash team announced they had gotten it working?

Solving those technical issues isn't a problem for Adobe. The question is how much it would cost them to solve the issue, port the software and maintain it. I'm certain that it's quite a lot. On the other hand they would have to get it back by selling licences. Considering that many professional users already have a license for Windows or Mac, it makes sense that it doesn't pay off at the moment.

So either you need to make it cheaper to port it to Linux, increase the potential user base on Linux or find someone who wants to sponsor the port. I think Adobe could push the Linux community if the just put out all the requirements they need and get the Linux community to improve on them (There would probably some momentum behind it if it comes from Adobe). But that would still leave the other two points.

There's quite a few interesting points in that thread, but it looks like the thing that needs to happen is (as the Adobe employee stated a few times) the linux community (or one or more of the major companies like Canonical) needs to come up with some up-front cash to initiate things.
The things which were called out as prohibiting the making of the port aren't going to happen on their own without someone providing the details so that the relevant projects can implement them. Either Adobe needs to step up and do it, or a 3rd party who is already invested in the community (like Canonical) needs to work with them to make things work.

As for which company would be the most likely to take on such a project, I honestly think that would be Canonical. Red Hat doesn't care that much about professional photo editing. Attachmate - I have no idea (Novell was in the same camp as Red Hat). Oracle - yeah, they don't care either. IBM? HP? other names with big coffers who care about the Linux platform? maybe, but I don't see them actually putting forth the amounts of time and money that Canonical would.

Someone go tell Mark/Canonical to sponsor the Linux port of Photoshop.

In the mean time, we'll continue using and improving Gimp, and Krita/Karbon.

slangkamp wrote:So either you need to make it cheaper to port it to Linux, increase the potential user base on Linux or find someone who wants to sponsor the port.

Personally, I think a lot of software companies (Adobe included) underestimates the potential numbers of Linux-using customers they could get. The reputation of Linux-users to only want free software is probably one factor in that.

That being said, the cost of porting may make it a non-issue even if they underestimate the market with several million users.

The issue is that the money that could be used for a port could be used to hire full-time developers to bring gimp up to snuff. I would suspect any group that would be in a position to fund a photoshop port would rather fund gimp development.

Currently gimp is pretty usable with only a handful of part-time developers, I have little doubt it could be made a serious contender with the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars Adobe seems to think that it would take to port photoshop.

But this is the absolute worst thing that could happen to adobe, since gimp is cross-platform. A free alternative to photoshop with similar features would be a disaster for adbobe. So I would think they would want to port to Linux just to prevent anyone from getting few up and helping gimp.

Well then I think the following blog has a number of good points that should definitely be taken into account if we want gimp to compete with photoshop:

http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... quate.html

I suppose that we should instead of asking merely: Can gimp do anything photoshop does, but instead: Can gimp (or krita or other contender) do everything that photoshop does with the same level of quality, detail and efficiency that photoshop does.