Photoshop guru John Nack departs Adobe for Google+ Photos team

 

 

Long-time Adobe manager and Photoshop guru John Nack threw something of a curve ball today, announcing that he's leaving the company with which he's spent the last decade and a half. One of the best-known names at Adobe -- in part thanks to his extremely popular blog, John Nack on Adobe -- he's now in his last week with the company before he leaves to take up a new role at Google.

Nack started at Adobe in mid-2000, and initially worked as a product manager on LiveMotion, a competitor app to Macromedia Flash. Two years later, he changed gears and joined the product team with which he's most closely associated, taking up the roles first of senior product manager and eventually principal product manager for Adobe Photoshop.

Under Nack's guidance, Photoshop underwent significant growth. Adobe Camera Raw -- now a key part of the app -- debuted as an optional plugin for Photoshop some four months after Nack came onboard, and the following year marked the arrival of the first Photoshop Creative Suite release. It was to be the first of five major updates during Nack's time on the Photoshop team.

He finally moved on to new projects within Adobe in May 2010, shortly after the release of Photoshop CS5 and CS5 Extended. Since then, Nack has been principal product manager of mobile products for the company, working on apps like Photoshop Touch for Android and iOS devices. And now, just shy of four years after taking the helm and guiding Adobe's mobile software development, he's made the decision to leave the company for Internet giant Google.

As yet, Nack's new role at Google hasn't been disclosed, although we do know that he'll be joining the Google+ Photos team. Of course, his departure from Google brings an end to the John Nack on Adobe blog -- but we wouldn't be too surprised to see a replacement pop up -- perhaps on Google+. And as he notes in announcing his move, his Twitter and Facebook profiles will continue, as well.