Mari developers at UK company The Foundry have expressed interest in developing a 2D painting application that could compete with Photoshop. Mari’s workflow and Python scripting could be incorporated into the new application. Knowing The Foundry’s expertise and quality of their tools they can certainly bring the project to fruition. With Photoshop being used in a wide range of industries they stand to gain a huge number of new users, and the incensed reactions caused by Adobe’s recent upgrade policy changes make it easy to predict that a great number of customers would switch to the new software.
Though developers at The Foundry are the first ones to express this publicly, and are in a privileged position to create a competing application that takes a big slice of Photoshop’s lucrative market, other companies have no doubt taken notice. We’re bound to see some interesting developments in the 2D painting arena soon. Adobe’s “cloud” strategy may have unwantedly created some healthy competition. Read The Foundry’s comments on CGTalk.
