Adobe’s John Nack announced on his blog this week that after 14 years with the company he will be leaving Adobe to join Google’s digital photography team. Before becoming the Principal Product Manager at Adobe, Nack spent 8 years on the Photoshop team.
In addition to a deep understanding of the inner workings of Photoshop, Nack has also been a passionate advocate for Adobe and its community for years, as you can see in a statement from his blog post:
Merlin Mann once asked me, “What do you want ten times more of?” I knew the answer: Impact. I’m so proud of the impact I’ve had at Adobe. From Smart Objects to Photoshop’s first-ever public beta to countless little tweaks over the years, I’m proud of that legacy. Now, though, I’ll get a chance to work on some new projects. It’s about doing something very different from, and I think complementary to, the work I’ve done at Adobe.
For these reasons and more, the addition of John Nack to Google’s digital photography team is significant.
What This Means For Google
Google went to great lengths over the past year to make Google+ the social media destination for photography enthusiasts with the capabilities they’ve added to the Google+ photo suite. Nack’s expertise could help with the cloud processing done by Google+ to edit and enhance photos.
The tremendous photography features of Google+ have been among the top reasons to use the platform as of late. The Auto Awesome features are something Nack could improve upon or add to. Not to mention Google owns Snapseed, one of the best mobile apps on the market for photo editing, which Nack could help make even better.
Or maybe Google and Nack will collaborate on something entirely new. No matter what they end up doing it’s clear Google is serious about continuing to step up their photography efforts, which is great news for those of us who enjoy editing and enhancing photos.
