Adobe brings Photoshop Express to the Web

Damian Koh | Mar 27, 2008

Adobe has just launched its latest addition to the Photoshop family--Photoshop Express. See our photo gallery of screen shots.

Photoshop Express is an online application based on Flash 9 technology that allows users to edit their photos from within a Web browser, or run it at full-screen mode. I tried it on my 20-inch widescreen LCD monitor and I must say it looks great.

Getting everything up and running was a breeze. First we'll need to sign up for a free account which entitles us to 2GB of online storage. During the registration, it will ask us to state where we are from, but the only option available was the US. So, we lied, like everyone else.

The interface of Photoshop Express is a lot like Picasa and iPhoto; both are desktop alternatives. Editing options are arranged in a column on the left and grouped according to Basics, Tuning and Effects. Selecting any of the available correction tools will bring up thumbnail previews which will show up on the original picture when the mouse pointer rolls over. Most of the options are pretty straightforward. It's mainly click and then select which outcome looks the best, but there are some which require a little more exploration. One example is the Touchup feature which resembles the clone stamp tool on Photoshop.

Editing pictures using Photoshop Express is not a destructive process, meaning to say you can revert to any of the previous states without losing any information. This is nothing new, but could be a lifesaver when users get overzealous in their editing.

One of the reasons Photoshop Express will fly is because of its integration with sites like Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa. For example, we can edit the pictures in our Facebook albums using the application and the changes will be reflected in the original folder. However, instead of replacing the photo you just edited, it adds it. This is nothing new to the Flickr community as the Picnik API does exactly that (or perhaps better) on the popular photo-sharing site. According to Webware, support for Flickr on Photoshop Express is next in line.

A possible bottleneck would be the speed of Internet connection. We were testing this on our office network, so things worked pretty fast. Sound off in Talkback if you are using this at home and feel that a slower connection will hamper the performance. Photoshop Express is currently in public beta and the company is inviting trial users to submit their feedback on the user experience of the application.