The fact that Coldfusion is now finally getting some image manipulation functions is brilliant news. HOWEVER…

As far as I can understand from reading various blogs, the new functionality seems limited to “non-professional” use (and may even “just” be a Java JAI port), i.e. not extensive enough for the type of image/graphics tasks which many of Adobe’s core target industries do on a regular basis (reprographics companies, pro-photograpers and design agencies).

I personally love Coldfusion, but many clients’ IT departments don’t want to use a “non-standard” language (i.e. not Java, .NET, or PHP) and Adobe really needs to give the CF community some killer features which are truly unique so we can give our clients a better reason for using CF than “It’s quicker and better to develop in…”
The areas where Adobe can most obviously develop world-class/unique functionality is in Imaging/Graphics and PDF (I won’t go into PDF here).

If Adobe is going to add CF Imaging functionality which isn’t up to the normal professional “Adobe level” and isn’t even integrated with their own standards/formats, then this can only mean that it isn’t serious about Coldfusion’s future…(and please don’t get me wrong, I am not insulting your achievements in your new features which are very welcome).

Providing the following features would give CF a truly unique feature set (aligned with Adobe’s main customer base to boot) and not just me-too functionality:
* Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, PDF, EPS, SWF and RAW file support (both read/write, and rasterisation of the vector formats)
* Conversion from RGB to CMYK based on ICC colour profiles (may already be possible)
* Extracting and embedding IPTC and EXIF data in JPEG, TIFF and Photoshop files
* Full XMP extraction/embedding from all relevant formats.
* Extraction of PDF pCOS data (e.g. for extracting PDF annotations).
* Maybe even some integration with Adobe Bridge
* And on a PDF note: Creation/building of PDF layouts from scratch or based on templates (i.e. like PDFlib and PDFLib Personalisaton Server)