Software test drive - Two program publishers with Minnesota operations illustrate trend of interactive product development

Software development once hewed to a tried-and-true formula. Coders pounded on keyboards behind closed doors for months. Finally, their products shipped in shrink-wrapped boxes to fanfare. Then, the developers slammed their doors and went at it again.

Now the Internet is dramatically changing how such products are created and offered to the public -- as two big software publishers with Minnesota connections have lately demonstrated with new digital-photography applications.

Adobe's Lightroom and Corel's Snapfire couldn't be more different. Lightroom is a high-end photo organizing and editing tool for professional photographers who pack the priciest digital cameras, while Snapfire is aimed at newbie shutterbugs wanting to dabble with the family pictures from their inexpensive snapshooters.

But the programs -- in development at opposite ends of the Twin Cities -- bear one striking similarity. Neither is finished, yet both are available as Internet downloads for anyone to grab, try out and comment upon. Such feedback is regarded as essential for improving future versions of the products.

This is a new way of doing business, Adobe and Corel are signaling. Coders don't always know best. The users help steer product development to completion.

Lightroom is perhaps the most dramatic example of this.

The pro app has percolated in public view for months now. This represents quite a shift for industry giant Adobe and its huge stable of products such as Photoshop, Premiere and Acrobat -- all hatched using traditional procedures.

Lightroom development -- spawned and spearheaded at Arden Hills facilities, with guidance from Adobe's Silicon Valley-based mother ship -- is anything but ordinary. Its makers have lobbed the product out to pro shooters for use in working conditions, which generates vital real-life feedback.

Two major revisions later, the software has morphed in major ways based on such in-the-trenches testing. Some users squawked, for instance, when they found they couldn't add background music to Web-based albums created within the program. Developers promptly added this feature.

They also set up discussion forums so Lightroom testers could interact, and released a series of video tutorials and mini-documentaries in downloadable "podcast" form so users and others could bone up on the software via their computers or video iPods. (Find the Adobe podcasts on the iTunes Music Store using a word search for "lightroom.")

"It's so rare for anyone to know what is going on inside a big software company," said Bob Pappas, Adobe's lead Lightroom engineering manager. But "if we develop a community that supports itself, we can respond more quickly" to what users want and need.

This also should mean less angst and uncertainty for those having to cough up hundreds of dollars for the final Lightroom version (in a Windows or Macintosh version) because the test versions have been out in public for so long.

Industry watchers compare Lightroom to Apple Computer's Aperture, a similar program developed privately and released with a big flourish in late 2005 only to make a loud thud as users catalogued its many shortcomings. Apple would have benefited from a bit of Lightroom-style testing and feedback before the product's final release, said Mike Evangelist, a Minnesota-based digital-photography enthusiast and a one-time Apple software-development manager.

Evangelist said he felt cheated in paying hundreds of dollars for Aperture -- and hundreds more to upgrade his Macintosh setup so the software would run less lethargically.

Corel's Snapfire work is being spearheaded in Eden Prairie -- at what used to be JASC Software before the famed Paint Shop Pro software maker was acquired by Canada-based Corel in late 2004.

Corel on Tuesday released two versions of the Windows-based photo-organizing and image-editing program. One, called Snapfire Plus, is being sold in essentially finished form for $40.

But, in an unusual move, Corel also is offering a no-cost version -- called, simply, Snapfire -- and classifying it as an unfinished "beta." This means it is certain to undergo major changes, the company said, as consumers grab it, try it and make known their likes and dislikes.

Such changes will be made quickly and transparently because of automated Internet-updating features built into the software, said Blaine Mathieu, general manager of Corel's JASC-centric digital-imaging arm. This is a departure from older programs that saw major updates only when released in their latest shrink-wrapped incarnations, he said.

This software-updating approach applies to Snapfire Plus, too.

"Someone who buys Snapfire Plus today will have a very different, much-improved version six or eight months later without spending another penny," Mathieu said. Corel will be able to add major new features, such as a DVD-burning module due late in the year, with little difficulty.

Corel has taken a clever route in offering a free program that isn't crippled but will lure many users into paying for the full version, said Ed Lee, who heads up digital-photography analysis at the InfoTrends market-research firm.

Yet Corel also is emulating Internet companies such as Google and Microsoft that offer services and programs in a beta form, which doesn't tie them down and allows them to try dramatic new things with plenty of user feedback. "That's happening more and more these days," Lee said.

Snapfire is "a 21st-century application," said Alexis Gerard, president of the Future Image market-analysis firm. It "really takes into consideration that desktops are not isolated islands (but) connected via broadband" Net hook-ups.