Photoshop plugins don't work that way for the most part. There's no way to tell from a given file "uses" a plugin or not - usually a plugin is a specialized image manipulation method.

>Splash screens are just a lazy way of saying the user's time isn't valuable.

Wow. Hyperbole much? I'd rather get all my loading done up front instead of waiting per file or per action anyways. Secondly, it's 8 seconds or so per app start. Less if you have an SSD or a non-recommended-reqs system. Perspective.

Also consider these are pro-tier applications. The target market isn't going to be exiting their apps again and again, rather launch once and stay inside them.

I dunno about Photoshop - I never use it - but in Illustrator, a lot of core program functionality is implemented as plugins nowadays. For CS5.1, plug-ins/extensions has 53 items, plug-ins/tools has 53.

I guess they could do some kind of lazy loading, but that'd be, you know, work to implement, and they're too busy with stuff like their own (broken) custom window routines to get Windowsesque MDI on the Mac.

The Adobe Reader plugin also loaded tons of default plugins (including JavaScript and 3D support) when opening any PDF. That's (one of the reasons) why it was so slow.