impressive, although i dont think i'd ever really use it. its surprisingly advanced, which is good - but being an advanced user, theres NO reason to NOT just get photoshop.
Indeed. It's very impressive, and makes a great demo, but I can't think of a single type of user who wouldn't be better served by some desktop application.
For power users, the lack of different color modes (CMYK, Lab, 16 bit/channel) or any kind of color management, curves (or even levels!), the kind of rich interaction (shortcuts, modifier-clicks, etc.) that desktop apps allow, serious retouching tools, line drawing tools, precise text control, etc. etc. makes this almost completely useless. Just the lack of the curves tool is frankly enough to doom any image editor (aimed at power users) which doesn't replace it with something of similar power.
For non-power-users, this is still missing important features, but it also has the same complex photoshop-like interface that has been confusing newbies for years. The learning curve of Splashup is steeper than it is for products aimed at casual users; they are better served by those tools.
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Clearly a lot of work went into splashup, and the technology will surely be useful for something--if nothing else it can be sold to some big company for piles of cash. But in its current incarnation it's basically useless.
Well, if the target market is professional designers (where by professional == getting paid), Photoshop pays for itself in a day or two. If the target is complete newbies, then their competition is not Photoshop, but a whole series of cheap/free/comes-with-the-machine tools, like Picasa, iPhoto, Photoshop Elements, etc.
