ImageMagick seems like not much more than a "free" implementation of many of Photoshop's features. While doing transformations in Photoshop it will continue to use the original until you apply the transformation as well. It doesn't keep resampling from the intermediate stage. That's why in the example I posted I specifically said to press RETURN to apply the transformation.

Pixelmator was just released today for Mac OS and uses ImageMagick as part of its core. It looks like a slicked up clone of Photoshop that's missing a number of features. They're certainly providing a useful tool because not everyone wants Photoshop. It's a great alternative at a much lower cost of $59. Unfortunately it falls into many of the same pitfalls. While it's using updated rendering technologies (Core Image and OpenGL) for speed, the fundamental operations are still handled the same rudimentary and archaic ways. Not terribly friendly to someone who doesn't want to use Photoshop because of its learning curve and unfriendliness.

This was a huge opportunity to make something truly new and fresh and the developers completely missed it. But they'll still make tons of money because there will be droves of lemmings drinking their Koolaid. And good for them of course.

99% of commercial software is just "good enough" - that's not the same thing as "good." Sometimes it's down right shit.

Even Lightroom with its new non-destructive editing is not very inspired. They took Apple's lead and just changed things up a bit. Though not as polished, they did implement a better asset management UI - it's also much faster on modest hardware for managing and sorting. But its retouching and correction tools are ultra weak and simply follow the same pitfalls long established by Photoshop. To put it in laymen's terms, it's just completely awkward bullshit.

Now Lightzone has a sweet set of tools. Just too many other issues with the product overall and the fact it can't replace Lightroom's Digital Asset Management nor community support.

There's still a huge hole in the market for the ideal all-in-one (or most-in-one) workflow application for digital photography. There are a lot of opportunities for more general purpose image editors as well, but this product class is a lot cloudier and easier to get lost in.

Adobe applications are the only choice around for anyone who cares about access to the same applications on multiple platforms. Sad state of affairs, because after CS3 it's obvious Adobe will never update any of their applications with the changes they need to stop being complete piles of shit. So it's shit most of us must continue to use... At least I don't have to use them under Windows.