If you're a big fan of the recent "Apple-Adobe Rift" rumors, enjoy them while you can, because they may evaporate come the end of next month. For the uninitiated, conspiracy theorists postulate that Adobe is dragging its feet on porting Photoshop to Mac OS X because Apple has secret plans to release its own image-editing software, allegedly called iPhoto. Certainly the delay in bringing a Carbonized Photoshop to market is at least slightly suspicious, given the fact that Adobe managed to demonstrate a quick and dirty port of the product on a pre-release version of Mac OS X way back in May of 1998-- and yet the company stuck to Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign when it gave its Expo Carbon demo a few weeks back.

Come Seybold, though, we may once again be treated to a glimpse of Photoshop on Mac OS X-- and this time, we might not be four years away from getting the shipping product. Faithful viewer The M@d H@tter pointed out a Think Secret article which claims that the Carbonized version of Photoshop 6.5 is just about ready to hit beta, and should be plenty finished enough to be shown at Seybold at the end of September. In fact, Seybold is probably a better venue at which Adobe could take the wraps off of a Carbonized Photoshop, anyway, since the entire audience at that show generally eats, sleeps, and breathes Photoshop. Whereas the Macworld Expo crowd consists of a wide cross-section of Macophiles, Seybold attendees are Photoshop-based life forms from the planet Gaussian Blur.

In case you've forgotten, while Steve is expected to be in Paris gearing up for the Apple Expo, his sidekick Phil Schiller will be delivering a keynote at Seybold, where he's likely to introduce the crowd to the newly-shipping Mac OS X 10.1. Did you notice who's slated to follow Phil on the keynote agenda? The first Tuesday keynote slot is still labeled as "to be announced," but we've already seen that Phil's batting lead-off-- and next in the line-up is Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen. Dare we expect a Photoshop-on-Mac-OS-X demo immediately following Phil's 10.1 announcement? Oh, we dare, Sparky. We dare plenty.

Things still aren't all sunshine and teddy bears as far as Photoshop for Mac OS X is concerned, however. Even if Adobe does announce and demo the product next month, Think Secret claims that the Carbonized Photoshop 6.5 won't actually ship until next year. Given that the vast majority of graphics professionals aren't even going to consider switching to Mac OS X until they can rely on their most important tool running natively, Apple's got a long journey ahead of it before the whole industry is Aquafied. (Now, about that Carbonized version of Final Cut Pro...)