Photoshop Goes Online

The long wait is finally over. On Thursday, Adobe Systems will launch its much anticipated web-based image editor: Photoshop Express. Internet users can now edit, store, and share photos online using Adobe Photoshop tools.

The Photoshop Express service is free with 2 gigabytes of storage. All you need to install is Flash Player 9 and you are good to go. Check out the preview page that I captured in the picture above. All those pictures are actually clickable – and they are all samples of what the service can do.

The service application is designed to be a compact Photoshop. The program’s developers say it will push the limits of browser applications; as it boasts of many editing tools that you simply can’t find – or compare – to anything else online.

Thursday’s launch is going to be the start of the live beta testing for the service. That way, they can save face if there are any bugs in the application – haha. But seriously, they said that the Adobe wants feedback from customers on how to improve the service.

After the beta test, Adobe plans to offer more premium features to premium users; and by premium they meant paying – somebody needs to get paid for making this app. Some of those added features include printing, added storage, support for audio, and additional file types. Right now it only works with jpeg.

But don’t fret. The basic service is advanced enough for normal point and shoot photography (sorry pros, this isn’t for your picky tastes).

Users who will avail of the service (premium or not) can organize photos by dragging them into albums. Then they can create a gallery to share their stored photos. These photos can be emailed thru links, embedded on web pages, or downloaded directly from the site.

For quick editing, all you have to do is hover over a photo. A menu will appear that lets you rotate the image, and has autocorrect, red eye removal and touch-up tools. It also includes a number of simple filters that lets you change the color or blur parts of an image. A preview thumbnail of the image will be displayed before saving changes; and just the same you can easily revert to the original.

For those not well-informed, the application’s launch actually took longer than expected. Adobe took the program further from being just an image-editing tool and added some well-loved social networking sites into the mix.

“We’ve seen a convergence of trends where the everyday consumer is becoming overwhelmed with the number of images and they have the desire to share images in new and interesting ways,” said the vice president of consumer and hosted solutions at Adobe, Mr. Doug Mack.

“We’re at the point now with bandwidth that most consumers can use really rich Internet applications and also have a relationship with a service where they store and upload images,” he added

I have tested the service myself and what I can say is that it is simple to use, and yet advanced enough that it will push the current standard of web-based online image editing. It helped a lot that Flash was behind the app as it was very pretty to look at in it’s entirety – it even had “cover flow” type galleries. It’s better than Picasa, that’s for sure.