Interview with Enrique Flouret, Owner of Photoshoproadmap

Why did you think of designing the site only on Photoshop?
I was a Photoshop instructor and found that there were many Photoshop sites but no directory to find them. Search engines results by that time (1999) were very inaccurate, so I decided to build a "roadmap" to those sites.

Do you use this software for your business?
Yes, but more as a tool. I'm now busy arranging deals with software companies and developing other web sites.

What is your experience of running the Photoshop site?
Incredible! Through these years, I learned all aspects of the web: Building a site, programming scripts, setting up servers, a lot of web marketing and email marketing, etc. I did almost everything related toInternet.

What you supply subscribers in the first newsletter?
An overwhelming amount of resources and tutorials (at least that's what my subscribers say!

Why did you think of starting with second newsletter?
Because I was receiving so positive feedback about my first newsletter. So I wanted to go one step forward and offer a second newsletter with more specific content that could be used as a reference.

Do you find any serious competition to Photoshop?
No. In fact the most serious competition to Photoshop is from Adobe itself: Photoshop Elements. Of course there are a lot of excellent programs, but Photoshop is king.

Tell us your opinion about the third party plug ins.
That's another point that the web was not addressing well. There were little plugin resources and they were outdated except for one or two sites. I wanted to show my visitors that there were a lot of great plugins that they could use. Until year 2001, when AutoFx released it's first version of DreamSuite, the plugin market was somehow sleep. Since that release, it seems that companies started again to produce great plugins. There are a lot of excellent plugins. I try to offer them at my site. Now I'm working with Frischluft, AVbros, AutoFX, Andromeda and HumanSoftware. I will be offering more plugins in the near future.

There are lots of books displayed on your site. Is there a good response to Photoshop books or people prefer training cds?
Both sell well, but there's a big difference in prices so people stick more to books than to training cds, but training cds are also very required.

Do they really interested in textures and ready-made templates?
humm... Regarding textures, there's a certain interest, but there are a lot of free resources, so people stick more to that option than to buy them. Anyway, my Paper Backgrounds are quite unique and it is hard, (if not impossible) to find a similar option. Regarding templates, I'm just started testing them. It seems a hot product, but I'm offering them since December, so I don't have a precise answer. But as you may have seen, there are dozens of template sites, so...

Where you find Photoshop in the future?
In the same place as now: Being the King.

What type of more additions we may see on your site?
Well... I run my site at afterwork hours, so additions are more impulsive than planned. Also, since November I'm facing a BIG bandwidth over usage problem that made me remove many images from my site. As far as I can plan in advance, I will be adding more tutorials and more exposure to great Photoshop plugins and related products.

Your future planning?
I'm leaving on summer vacation (here in Argentina it's the end of summer), so I can only think on resting ;-) Anyway, this year I will be updating and growing The Photoshop Roadmap. And by the end of the year I have plans to start a software company. I have two products in mind: a collections of graphics and design training ebooks and... a Photoshop plugin.

Enrique Flouret, an Architect, worked as Graphic Designer and Graphics Software Instructor living in Buenos Aires, the Capital City of Argentina.Now he run The Photoshop Roadmap and four online stores:
Article Source from :insidegraphics