RSSAdobe opens beta of Web-based Photoshop
By Tim Conneally | Published March 27, 2008, 2:02 PM
Though it was expected before year-end 2007, Adobe has opened the public beta of Photoshop Express, a Web-based version of its photo editing tool.
Users of Photoshop Express can upload photos directly or import their libraries from Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa. Yahoo's Flickr is notably absent, as the popular photo sharing site is partnered with Picnik for its editing features.
However, Photobucket and Picasa already come equipped their own editing functions. Both offer similar tools with their hosting services which in some respects actually provide better results than Adobe's.
Photobucket's relationship with Adobe in this respect is an interesting one, as the software company provides its Adobe Premiere Express for video editing on the media hosting site, but photo editing tools are provided by competing site FotoFlexer.
Adobe has brought all the features to the site which were shown in demo several months ago. Each shot can be edited, embedded, emailed, linked, or downloaded. Editing features include "Basics" (crop/rotate, auto correct, exposure, red eye removal, touch-up, saturation,) "Tuning" (white balance, highlight, fill light, sharpen, soften focus,) and "Effects" (pop color, hue, black and white, tint, sketch, distort.)
User accounts come with 2 GB of photo storage, and photos pulled from partner sites do not consume any of that space. Further, any editing that is done to Facebook-hosted images requires Photoshop Express to be granted an additional level of access to your Facebook account, as the images are saved directly to Facebook instead of the Photoshop Express site.
While the features provided by Adobe are entry-level at best, and offer little that other sites do not already offer, the power of the site comes from Adobe's brand name. Since the adoption of online "webtop" applications is still gaining momentum, participation by "big name" software providers like Adobe could help push such services into their next generation.
Since last November, prospective customers have been expecting an offline-capable version of the Web application, using Adobe's AIR platform. That version may be forthcoming, as the current beta runs on the basic Flash platform, and is thus restricted to online use.
This is cool sure. But it's not Photoshop it's not even Elements. They are just using a strong brand to try to create interest but it's not much more than Picnik with some cool client-side tricks in Flex for manipulation. It could certainly go somewhere but I wish they wouldn't market it as a "Photoshop for the people" because it's simply not the case.
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I don't think there will be much use for those kinds of online services. Just my opinion though. Google apps come to this same category.
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Wow! That's is awesome. I don't think there will ever be as much power in that as the software though. Sure, those features are pretty neat to use online. But I won't be completely happy until they offer the same effects that we have all come to love. You can already do this in a lot of places and like you said, it's been a year coming and I'm honestly not that impressed.
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www.TalkPrice.net
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"Wow! That's is awesome." ... "I'm honestly not that impressed."
... can you take your spam somewhere else?
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""Wow! That's is awesome." ... "I'm honestly not that impressed."
... can you take your spam somewhere else? "
The only one spamming here is you for the matter of fact saying that you have not even commented on the article it self. Also it makes perfect sense, I think its a great start in a new direction but there still needs to be work done.
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