The graphics software market in India has traditionally encompassed everything from image editing software, Web authoring tools, the ubiquitous DTP packages, to today’s 3D animation applications. Though the industry is afflicted by rampant piracy, the good news is that many of the vendors are investing heavily in R&D in India. Rajneesh De reports on the dynamics of this huge sector and finds out where individual segments are heading

Pankaj Kedia of Discreet India feels Discreet products would be key catalysts in India becoming a global animation hub

Computers have not only changed the world of science, but the advent of digital graphics applications has revolutionised the creative world too. If you have a basic sense of aesthetics, coupled with IT application handling skills, you are only a mouse click away from creating your masterpiece on cyber easels. It’s no wonder that some of the leading names in the global software arena are today dealing with different forms of graphics software. Players such as Adobe, Macromedia, Discreet (from AutoCAD), and Corel, besides many others, are primarily graphics application developers though their individual areas of expertise in this broad segment differ.

It’s not an easy task to categorise the broad and often loosely defined term ‘graphic software.’ The ubiquitous Adobe Photoshop is as different from Macromedia’s Dreamweaver as chalk from cheese, and their functions are widely divergent too. And how can you compare either of these with Discreet 3D Studio Max, today being widely used by both Hollywood and even Bollywood pashas to create those fantastic marvels on screen. We at Express Computer have attempted to broadly categorise this segment into four entities: Desktop publishing (DTP) software, Web authoring software, Image-editing software and lastly, Animation software. Purists would argue that this categorisation is very broad. Within DTP, there are different areas, while image editing as a category is a very grey area, determined more by marketing moguls than by users. And lastly, animation is a tall ladder where 3D Studio Max is only at the lowest rung with a host of high-end names like Edit and Combustion, and that too in different areas of specialisation like animation, editing and compositing, among others.

Publishing from desktops
Desktop publishing has flourished in India through the last decade. In fact, much before the services and dot-com booms, India had witnessed the DTP boom, though it has been deprived of its due publicity both from bodies like Nasscom or even the media, mainly due to the unfashionable tag associated with it. Dataflow Software brought DTP into India through its Devyani software, way back in 1986. Devyani, which evolved from a Devnagari word processor on an Apple II, later transformed into a PC clone, was adopted by most major media groups with vernacular language newspapers.

Back then, Apple’s Macs were the only alternative to big typesetting equipment. The entry of cheaper PCs opened up this technology to a wide variety of printing houses. Several newspaper and magazine installations followed, and the mushrooming DTP bureaux quickly standardised on a host of DTP products. This marked the entry of global players like Adobe and Quark into India, who are still the leading players offering a host of local versions too to their clients.

QuarkXPress from the Quark stable is the leading DTP application in India, and has been a favourite of the publishing community for a long time. Quark Inc.’s communications manager Glen Turpin’s claim that QuarkXPress enjoys 85 percent of the DTP market share in India, is supported by most publishers. Though QuarkXPress 5.0 has been launched globally, the current version available in India is 4.1. It comes in three editions: QuarkXPress International English, QuarkXPress Mudra, the multi-lingual version of QuarkXPress that supports Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, and Nepali languages, and finally the QuarkXPress Arabic Edition. This is an affirmation, reiterates Turpin, of Quark’s dedication to supporting publishing in many of the world’s languages.

In fact, Quark currently publishes software in 27 languages. Adds Turpin, “Our products promote communication and support multi-lingual publishing. Collaboration across borders is an important aspect of Quark’s culture. Within our company, we enjoy a cultural mosaic and offer our employees many opportunities to interact with colleagues from dozens of nations.” This explains Quark’s success in India with QuarkXPress Mudra. Several groundbreaking features for Indian-language publishing, including customisable keyboards, large character and conjunct sets, and customisable text entry options make QuarkXPress Mudra a comprehensive Indian-language publishing software. It includes seven default keyboard layouts. Users can create their own customised keyboard layouts to satisfy the text entry needs of any publisher.

“Quark understands and protects the investment publishers have made in Indian-language publishing tools,” says Turpin. “Following the basic tenet of giving maximum flexibility to the user, we made a tremendous investment in understanding our customers’ requirements and translating them into powerful features.” Indian-language publishers have traditionally been hindered by non-standard character sets and mappings that prevent information interchange and force users to buy separate fonts for each publishing application. The Font Filter utility in QuarkXPress Mudra allows users to work with almost any Indian-language font format. Users can import and export Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) text.

It’s not that Quark is popular in India only because of its local version—even QuarkXPress 4.1 is extremely popular. Most page layout designers working with the large number of English publications in India, leave alone the huge number of DTP shops found today in every nook and corner of the country, swear by QuarkXPress.

What makes QuarkXPress tick in the publishing community? Says G V Shreekumar, professor with the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay and a consultant to leading publishing houses for two decades, “The two biggest advantages that one notices in this software are quick loading and low system requirements. One is not deterred from loading it on a 486 machine too.” Among its other advantages, one can count on its simple interface with floating toolbars consisting of the most common set of frequently used tools. QuarkXPress 4.1 also offers some functionalities that allow users to create gradients, draw diagrams, make paths and flow text on it. Another useful feature this software possesses is its ability to generate an on-screen display of linking of various objects.

However, one irritating aspect of QuarkXPress is its inability to import Word or Excel files. It refuses to accept such data and only generates junk characters. One has no choice but to save files in the rich text format (RTF) when using Word documents. This results in significant problems as data has to be reformatted and tables have to be drawn manually.

The biggest competition to QuarkXPress comes from PageMaker (currently running version 7.0), another offering from Adobe—perhaps the most well known of all graphics companies—whose products straddle across almost all the categories. A common complaint amongst most layout designers is that by and large the software retains the feel of the old PageMaker everyone is used to since version 3.0. While in some cases, this might be a blessing in disguise, on many occasions it shows an unfathomable reticence on the part of Adobe to rectify problems and incorporate changes like they do with their other flagship products like Photoshop and Acrobat.

According to most industry pundits, other PageMaker problems include standards issues where the software is not able to import certain image and text files at all, or alter fonts or other such design elements. Integration with other external tools is poor; importing a table from an application bundled along with PageMaker—like the Adobe Table program that facilitates generating tables—requires one to go through the OLE function. Even functions like Photoshop Effects and other such imaging tools work with TIFF images only.

Sandeep Mehrotra of Adobe India says InDesign is perhaps the first global software product that a team based in India has helped develop

While importing from Word documents, PageMaker loses font size and formatting, although one does not have to rework as much as it does maintain characters that are bold, italicised, underlined, and even page breaks. Managing text linkage is not as good as in Quark—you have to use a clumsy Links Manager to figure out how your text flows through the pages. It also lacks basic features like character styles and design elements such as gradients, etc. There are no drawing tools other than the basic lines and box/ellipse tools. One nice addition, however, is the ability to export as an HTML and PDF file with a fair degree of format preservation and automatic image conversion to JPEG format.

One reason that most users in the publishing community say PageMaker trails way behind QuarkXPress, is that Adobe itself trying to push InDesign as a better page layout alternative. However, Sandeep Mehrotra, business development manager, Adobe India, strongly refutes such an argument. With InDesign 2.0 adding 800 new features, many hope that it may finally make significant inroads into Quark’s market dominance.

One heart-warming aspect with most of the page layout applications is the amount of time and money that vendors like Adobe and Quark are investing in India. The file format group of Adobe India has developed most of the data import-export capability for InDesign. “InDesign is one of the first major global software products where a team located in India played a significant role in engineering and development,” adds Mehrotra. This includes critical components such as QuarkXPress and PageMaker converters, and Office import plug-ins, which are some of the most used methods for getting data into InDesign.

Even Quark has invested a lot on R&D in India. According to Turpin, Quark’s development facility in Chandigarh is one of its three global development centres, and as such plays a crucial role in the development of Quark software. “Thanks to our Indian development centre, we now develop software around the clock. Teams of engineers based in the United States, Germany, and India work collaboratively to plan and develop all our software products.”

Web publishing software like Adobe Acrobat also comes into the picture when you talk of publishing software. However, Acrobat Writer, along with Photoshop is one of the most heavily pirated Adobe products in India.

Authoring websites
The dot-com boom in the late 90s gave rise to a whole new burgeoning community of Web designers. As a corollary, demand for Web authoring tools and Web designing software grew by leaps and bounds. But rampant piracy ensured that this did not translate into sales figures. None of the leading products—Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe GoLive, have escaped this scourge.

Dreamweaver from Macromedia is the leading product in India, with Shiram Krishnamachari, country manager, Macromedia India, claiming a 95 percent market share. Though this might be a highly optimistic figure, most Web designers opine that for intricately designed Web pages, Dreamweaver is the ideal, if not the only answer. What keeps Dreamweaver miles ahead of the competition is the fact that most feel that FrontPage is very basic feature-wise and therefore suited more for novices. What prevents GoLive from gaining wider acceptance is the notion amongst most in the designer community that it works better on Macs. Very few publishing houses in India can afford Macs, and especially for the Web designing community the exorbitant price tag of a Mac is a definite put off. One more advantage that Dreamweaver has is its immaculate compatibility with Flash, another software from Macromedia. Now, almost all Web designers swear by Flash, and though it is compatible with other Web authoring tools too, coming from the same vendor, Dreamweaver and Flash share some common traits in the form of some plug-ins.

What are the other beneficial features of Dreamweaver? According to a Web designer with more than five years of experience, Dreamweaver provides advanced design and layout tools. It also makes it easy to use Dynamic HTML features such as animated layers and behaviour without writing a line of code. Browser targeting checks a designer’s work for potential problems on all popular platforms and browsers. Macromedia’s Round-trip HTML technology imports HTML documents without reformatting code. What makes it even more exciting is that Dreamweaver is fully customisable. Says Krishnamachari, “You can create your own objects and commands, modify menus and keyboard shortcuts, and even write JavaScript code to extend Dreamweaver with new behaviours and property inspectors.”

Krishnamachari lists the main advantages of Dreamweaver 4.0 that is now available in India. These include:

• An integrated text editor that allows auto-indexing, and a capability to edit non-HTML elements like JavaScript, XML and other text files directly in the code view.
• JavaScript debugging and an O’Reilly reference integrated within.
• A standard Macromedia user interface common to all Web authoring products.
• Asset management feature that allows tracking of images, scripts, Flash, Shockwave and Quick Time objects smoothly.
• Site reporting capabilities that can fix common problems like broken links, missing alt text and headlines.
• A new layout view that affords great tools for HTML coding and multimedia enhancements, linking of e-mail addresses of users, and customisation of information like status of a page to team members.

On the other hand, though Microsoft’s FrontPage has been popular with a lot of beginners, Microsoft strangely has not marketed this product very aggressively. However, with the latest version FrontPage 2002 available as a component of Office XP, Microsoft seems to have hit the bulls-eye as far as the marketing strategy is concerned. This version still does not have an in-built image editor but one can choose to set a default image viewer or editor using the Tools > Options menu. It also has support for low-source images. When inserting forms, one can add various kinds of boxes and buttons onto a particular form. One can also change the specifications for each of the tables created. Size and pixel size in percentage can also be changed. The borders can be coloured by clicking on the particular border and then clicking on the cell or table properties. The width can also be specified.

Adobe GoLive 5.0 has a lot of preference features for a user to choose from, and a whole list of customisation and settings that can be changed. Features such as spell checkers and options for uploading a site to an FTP server through a proxy server, etc, are aspects one will not find in other packages. The form components are all present in the panel on the right of the main interface. GoLive allows you to set up images on a Web page and one can use Adobe’s default editor, Photoshop, for editing. The software is strong on synchronising Web pages over the Internet using FTP servers, etc. The uploading tool gives the designer the option to only upload files that have been modified. The software supports CSS as well and one can change preferences by clicking on the Edit menu and choosing Web Settings. While this Web authoring tool has more features than others, it loses out because it is not so user-friendly.

As far as Flash is concerned, Macromedia seems to have scored on that front too. According to Krishnamachari, Macromedia Flash is the de facto standard today. “Our Flash player is the single most widely downloaded software in the history of the Web. Flash player is deployed on 414 million desktops i.e. 98.3 percent of Web users. It’s no wonder, Macromedia has been witnessing a 78 percent year-on-year growth in India.”

Photoshop reigns supreme
The image editing market per se has no competition, with Photoshop from Adobe remaining the king of all it surveys. Basically, within all hues and colours of graphics designers, it is now accepted that without learning how to use Photoshop, no one can even claim to be a graphic designer. Though image-viewing freeware like IrfanView and ACDSee are available, there is still no disputing Photoshop’s popularity. Keeping in mind Photoshop’s astounding popularity in India, Adobe launched Photoshop’s latest version in India in line with the global launch.

Says Mehrotra, “Photoshop is the most frequently used image editing software in India. The new Photoshop 7.0 provides professionals with breakthrough capabilities to meet today’s challenging business environment. The new features directly address the growing needs of designers and photographers, building on improvements to existing features to meet the demands of our customers.”

According to Shriram Krishnamachari, Macromedia India plans significant increases in channel strength this year

The major enhancements in Photoshop 7.0 include the File Browser, which is an image organisation tool that allows users to browse image thumbnails; quickly rotate, sort, rank, and batch rename images, as well as view EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) information from digital cameras. The new Healing Brush feature simplifies the photo retouching process by allowing users to effortlessly remove dust, scratches, blemishes, wrinkles, and other flaws. At the same time it preserves the shading, lighting, and texture of an original image.

Photoshop 7.0 also offers many creative tools, including the new Painting Engine that allows users to simulate traditional painting techniques. The new Scripting Support plug-in enables Photoshop 7.0 users to automate repetitive tasks from basic manipulation of single objects to complex control of multiple documents, and completely replace manual workflows across multiple Adobe applications. Instructions for downloading the Photoshop Scripting plug-in installer, which supports AppleScript, JavaScript, and Microsoft Visual Basic scripting languages. In addition, Photoshop 7.0 incorporates ZoomView technology, provided by Viewpoint Corporation, which allows customers to link to a site and deploy large, print-quality images online.

Adobe also uses the huge popularity of Photoshop to push its other products in India. Photoshop 7.0 is tightly integrated with Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, LiveMotion, Premiere, After Effects and Acrobat. It also integrates with Adobe AlterCast, an imaging server software, which streamlines managing and updating large image libraries.

Three dimensional angle
With more and more Bollywood productions employing 3D animations and special effects techniques and Hollywood outsourcing a chunk of its work to India, 3D animation software is gradually becoming the talk of the town and Discreet seems to be leading the pack. Discreet applications that are being widely used in India include 3D Studio Max, Character Studio, Combustion, Edit and Flint, among others.

3D Studio Max is the most popular of Discreet offerings with most studios in the country. And its latest version 5.0, which was released last month, is already a hit with Discreet aficionados. According to Pankaj Kedia, country manager, Discreet India, this 3D modelling, animation and rendering software contains the essential high-productivity tools required for creating eye-catching film and television animation, cutting-edge games, and distinct design visualisations.

Kedia also lists the outstanding features of the latest version. These include:

• Global illumination with exposure control, photometric lights and new shaders.
• Export to real-time 3D environments with Render-to-Texture, Normal Maps, and Light Maps.
• Support for Vertex Colour Baking of Radiosity solutions.
• New intuitive Curve and Dope Sheet Editor, Draw Curves, and Soft Key Selections.
• Enhanced animation capabilities with a new Set Key system to streamline pose-to-pose animation.
• Perfect control over mapping co-ordinates with a new UVW Unwrap modifier.
• Polygonal modelling.
• Free 5th-generation backburner network rendering and management utility for management of 3D Max and Combustion, another editing tool from Discreet.

It is widely believed that the animation industry would be the next big boy of the Indian IT industry, and according to Kedia, Discreet would be the main catalyst in this movement. Even senior industry observers tend to agree. Arena Multimedia, a branch of Aptech, has tied up with Discreet to offer training on its products. “The alliance ensures Discreet’s latest animation products such as 3D Max and Character Studio are regular offerings at Arena’s training centres across India. The unique feature of this alliance undoubtedly lies in Indian students being able to experience training on Discreet’s world-renowned course on animation,” says Sudhir Mathur, head, Arena Multimedia.

Says Mathur, “A recent study by Andersen Consulting states that the Indian animation industry is currently pegged at $550 million, is slated to clock a growth rate of 30 percent per annum in the next three years and is expected to reach approximately $15 billion by 2008. The mission of Arena is to create a pool of high calibre multimedia professionals who will have the confidence to meet the needs of any global organisation and we believe that Discreet India can play a major part in this endeavour.”

However popular the 3D Studio Max might be, many senior animators feel that for high-end animation work there is no competition to Maya, a software developed by Alias Wavefront, and distributed by the Bangalore-based Tata Elxsi.

Though Discreet is the leading player in the 3D software space, there are some niche players like Pinnacle, which specialises in video editing software. Says Krishan Sanghi, manager, India Rim, Pinnacle Systems, “As a world leader in digital video, we are expanding the market and bringing video editing to both the corporate and the home user, even in India. For example, now a computer user can capture video from his camcorder, add titles, effects, voice over and even music just for about Rs 5,000 only using Pinnacle Studio DV Clip. Our TV tuners are available for Rs 3,500 and less and allow you to watch TV on a PC with pause and replay, and even create VCDs from camcorder video on your PC.” Pinnacle Express also makes it very easy to create VCDs with interactive menus for all. He adds, “Shifting to event videography, our Pro ONE and MP20 are very much appreciated. Pro ONE helps event videographers to edit weddings, birthdays, get-togethers, etc, and make them more presentable and enjoyable. Recently, we launched Pinnacle Edition DV 500 which promises to change the way DV is used and edited.”

Channel strategy
One important aspect for all graphic software vendors is their channel strategy. According to Mehrotra, Adobe’s prime thrust in India is to increase penetration of channels. From the present strength of 30 authorised partners all over the country, it intends to add more partners to the list. Talking about the product line, Mehrotra said that apart from Acrobat, Photoshop still continues to be in focus, and is the largest revenue earner for Adobe in India at present. Adobe is still exploring the market potential and has tied up with Wipro to work out a pilot project and customise these solutions for the Indian print and publishing industry. The company will also be using the channel expansion route in order to strengthen its position in the B&C class cities to capture the pirated software market.

Earlier in the year Adobe had brought about major changes in incentive schemes for the distributor. The company replaced its backend rebates with a redeemable point-incentive scheme and this scheme varies every quarter. Till now, it has had different schemes like the ‘Great Indian Rodeo Scheme’ and the ‘Adobe Sharp Shooter’ Scheme which are point-based systems in which every distributor can add a set number of points for every sale and in the end redeem these points in return for consumer durables. Mehrotra reveals that Adobe did this because it realised that cash incentive schemes resulted in the undercutting of prices in the market, and consequently the product was getting redistributed within the channel. Volume sales remained mere figures on paper.

Krishnamachari reveals that Macromedia has three distributors in India—Tech Pacific, Sonata and Wipro Infotech. Macromedia products and technologies in India are being used by various segments. These include corporate IT, Web developers and e-learning companies, media and the entertainment sector, software companies and the education segment. “We have 26 Macromedia preferred resellers in nine cities in India. We plan to add 15 more preferred resellers in this quarter. We also have three Macromedia education resellers who focus on the education segment. We plan to have 15 such resellers all over India by end of this quarter,” adds Krishnamachari. Both Discreet and Pinnacle have Aditya Infotech as their main distributor.

Krishan Sanghi says Pinnacle Systems is expanding the Indian market by bringing video editing to both corporate and home users

Is piracy really bad?
Another major bane for all these software companies has been the piracy issue. Adobe, along with Microsoft and Oracle, in fact has been at the forefront of the anti-piracy drive in conjunction with Nasscom.

Almost 90 percent of the market in the smaller cities use pirated software, and Adobe is directing its efforts to convert this market into a licensed market. Adobe’s anti-piracy initiatives are revolving around balancing education with enforcement in dealing with software piracy. There have also been attempts to increase awareness about piracy in the graphics industry. In the past, Adobe has carried out a host of initiatives like the ‘Robin Hood Initiative’, which is designed to provide information through the firm’s website. Since piracy often results from confusion about the rights and responsibilities of owning software, the site is designed to partner with users and help them understand the value of using legal software. In India, Adobe initiated an awareness programme for the police department in Bangalore, with people coming down from Singapore, and is involved in various training programmes. Adobe Systems’ initiative takes a hardline approach against people who distribute and sell copies of the software maker’s products illegally.

The common consensus among most of these vendors, however, is to adopt an education and amnesty approach rather than taking legal recourse. Says Sehgal, “We have approached corporates directly with special offers and amnesty programs. We have seen an increase in our sales in India, but it is very difficult to measure how much of that increase is a result of our anti-piracy programmes.” Adds Krishnamachari, “We are part of BSA (Business Software Alliance) in India, which is in an aggressive anti-piracy enforcement campaign. However, we also educate our customers on software licensing through direct mailers, seminars, etc.”

While no vendor would admit to it, some observers feel that vendors inadvertently or deliberately encouraged piracy in the past. They may be members of BSA today, but at some stage they themselves encouraged the use of free software and piracy to ensure market penetration, simply by ignoring piracy. Says an industry analyst on condition of anonymity, “If we look at the Asia Pacific market for example, a major reason why the Microsofts and the Adobes of this world could penetrate China or Singapore is because pirated versions had already gone a great way in increasing awareness. The same is true for India where many of these graphics pashas once encouraged sellers in Lamington Roads and Nehru Places where pirated software is sold.”

A senior executive from one of the leading vendors puts it bluntly. He feels that in the case of graphics, the pluses of a multi-user syndrome cannot be ruled out. “If an SME, for example, is willing to pay Rs 50,000-plus for an application, won’t the decision making authorities want to have at least a working knowledge of how it runs, and what it can do to streamline their businesses? Again, at least a percentage of people buying pirated software would at some stage go in for a legal version of the same, at least for tax reasons. They might after that, make five copies of the same and use it in five different workstations, but for a software company this becomes a classic case of half a loaf being better than none.”

This could be good news for companies, going by the simple rule of statistics that as the number of users increase and as people become increasingly aware of the demerits of using pirated software, the sale of legal software will also be on the rise. This would mean that piracy levels in India will settle down to an acceptable 15 to 20 percent, rather than the 75 percent-plus figure it correctly stands at.

In the ultimate analysis, what comes out is that the entire graphic designing community in India is a burgeoning one, with perhaps the highest growth potential in the near future. If vendors combat threats like piracy with good pricing, and provide innovative applications that the industry needs, there is no reason why the likes of Adobe, Discreet and Macromedia cannot see more growth in India.