...originally posted on www.pixmantec.com on July 7, 2006.
As the head of product management for professional digital imaging at Adobe, let me give my apologies for not having provided more information to date on the acquisition. We have not communicated as well as we should have. I can assure you, however, that many of us at Adobe have been reading all of your concerns here and in other forums over the past two weeks, and we have also had many conversations with Michael Tapes to get his feedback. We are working hard to resolve issues and put the right plans in place for Pixmantec customers. We are still hammering out details on some things, however, so I'm afraid that I can't provide all of the answers that you might like just yet. What I can say is the following:
Whether any of you ever purchase another product from Adobe, you are now all Adobe customers in our eyes, and your satisfaction matters to us just as much as any other customer. We can't expect you to be happy about the fact that we're discontinuing the RawShooter products. What we can do, however, is make this transition as painless as possible. That means keeping this forum going as long as it's needed, providing an easy transition (both in cost and in workflow) to other products, and listening to all of your product concerns and requests.
Let me also state emphatically that the goal of this acquisition is not about taking another raw converter off the market. Our goal at Adobe is providing the best possible photography solutions, and we recognized the ability of the Pixmantec team to help us do that. The discontinuation of RawShooter is just an unfortunate byproduct of that decision. While you may not feel today that this decision was the best thing for Pixmantec customers, our goal is that one or two years from now, as you enjoy the fruits of this partnership, you do feel that way.
Thanks for your passion and your patience, and please stay tuned...
- Kevin Connor
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Sr. Dir. of Product Management, Adobe