Adobe’s analysis of the use of its creative tools revealed that Photoshop is used by more than 90% of people designing and producing printed textiles. As a result, the company moved to enhance the program’s capabilities to make life easier for textile and apparel designers using Photoshop with its plug-in code-named Project Paras. According to Mike Scrutton, Director of Print Technology and Strategy for Adobe, the company chose to launch a public beta to gain insight into the features that were most important to users in order to ensure the most effective product when it was ready to launch. “We had a target for the number of users to sign up for the public beta through April 2018,” says Scrutton, the 2019 recipient of the TAGA Michael H. Bruno Award. “We blew through that in the first six weeks. We were thinking in terms of hundreds of users but now we are counting in thousands. They are from all around the world, ranging from the hobbyist market to freelancers, brands, and other commercial companies we never thought would be interested, like video game manufacturers.”

Adobe also worked with AATCC and the education community during the public beta period, even sponsoring a design competition for students that was picked up by a number of schools. “People are coming out of the woodwork,” Scrutton added. “We even learned there was a private Facebook group where people give each other design advice that has been discussing the software, and we picked up some people as a result of that. Project Paras user and teacher Mel Armstrong even produced an online video course about Project Paras and shared it with their community.”

The official product name has now been announced and the product will be featured at Adobe’s FESPA press conference in Munich on May 15. (WhatTheyThink will be there!) “We’ve named the product Adobe Textile Designer for Photoshop,” Scrutton said, “and we’ll also be bringing it to ITMA where we will have our own booth for the first time. We’ll be holding a press conference there as well.”