First Look: Adobe's free Photoshop

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 27 Mar 2008 at 09:35

Adobe has launched a beta version of its free online image editor Photoshop Express, offering seamless integration with Facebook and Picasa.

Once registered, users are given 2GB of space to store images, which can be edited and publicly shared via the My Gallery feature.

Although the US is the only option for country of residence when signing up, we had no problem registering with UK email addresses.

The service works especially well with Facebook, importing all images and albums from an account with titles and descriptions intact.

These images can then be browsed and edited from within Photoshop Express, but if changes are saved Facebook creates a copy of the image rather than overwriting the original.

Unfortunately, images accessed in this way are available only in low resolution due to the compression Facebook uses when uploading images.

Picasa integration works in a similar way, but images are stored at the original resolution, and edits are stored as a copy with a forgivable but slightly cheeky self promoting link to the Photoshop Express website.

The service may be less advanced than the desktop version of Photoshop, but is impressively simple to use and powerful enough for most casual users.

Images can be cropped, tinted, rotated, distorted and sharpened and there are several automatic tools for reducing red-eye and adjusting the hue and saturation of an image.

Despite these tasks being processor- and bandwidth-intensive, the site performs edits quickly and smoothly. Past versions of the file are even stored, as in desktop applications, and can be scrolled through with undo and redo buttons at the bottom of the screen.

The interface is admirably clean, with menus animated in a simple but attractive fashion that shows Adobe has mastered the creation of web applications.

The tipping point has been reached here, and Photoshop Express is easily as usable as its desktop brethren, Elements. In fact, when using the online service in fullscreen mode it is easy to forget that you are using a browser.

Online tools

Adobe has previously announced that it is committed to developing online tools, last year acquiring Virtual Ubiquity, the company behind the Buzzword online word processor.

Adobe's chief executive, Bruce Chizen, said at last year's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that the company is likely to see a complete transition away from desktop applications to online services in a decade.

Click here for our full review of Adobe Photoshop Express