Thread: Bare Bones Photoshop

ADOBE HAS FINALLY made available Photoshop Express, the online version of its popular image editing tool. This is a great start to online image editing, but don't expect it to be a replacement for the full desktop version.

Web 2.0 Welcomes Image Editing Photoshop Express is a classic example of a Web 2.0 application (that is hosted on a server which you can use from any PC connected to the Internet). Adobe also offers storage space with a 2GB limit per account and gives you a customized link for your photo albums, thus making Photos hop Express double up as a photo sharing site.

There is no dearth of photo sharing and photo printing web sites that offer basic editing features as well, but Photoshop Express takes editing many steps forward. Let's put it like this: It can replace the desktop version of Picasa for most people.

Features
Once you create your user ID and upload your photos, merely hovering your mouse over your image thumbnail gives you an 'Edit Photo' option. Fol¬lowing this, in what appears to be Picas a inspired; you will see the various editing features under three head¬ings - Basics, Tuning and Effects. Clicking on any of these options will bring up the submenu for you to choose how exactly the change should be applied.
For example, when you click on the Exposure setting, you get the option to choose from different expo¬sure levels, identified by numerical values. Or, when you click on the Hue set¬ting, you get the option to choose colors to apply.

Under the Basics options, a very useful (and not com¬monly found on other web¬sites) is the equivalent of the Healing Tool found in the desktop version of Pho¬toshop. On Photoshop Express it is called 'Touchup', which copy-pastes from one area of the image onto another, enabling you to remove blemishes or dirt.
There is also the Autocorrect feature that does not just apply changes depending on how the software 'sees' the image, but gives your five options as well. These are examples of areas where Adobe has gone one up on other websites. Take for instance, Flickr, which is primarily a photo sharing site. While it is no doubt good as a photo sharing service, it stops at cropping and resizing, setting color levels and adding tints. Snapfish, a photo printing service does not go too much beyond adding bor¬ders, tints cropping and rotating. While Photoshop Express is nowhere near the desktop version of the near omnipresent Pho¬toshop (or even the stripped down Photo¬shop Elements), when compared to other online services, it is a
significant step forward.



When seen as a photo sharing service, we found it a bit irritating that you can only view images one after the other and there is no thumbnail view. Also, a sim¬ple resizing option is miss¬ing from the editing / manipulation functions.
Design and Navigation Users who have seen Adobe's Lightroom will not find Photoshop Express to be very different in appearance- the black theme is very telling and makes for a good background for most images in a slideshow. We found performing operation online is fairly fast - about 30 seconds to apply a
sketch filter and display the result for a 1MB image. The navigation is very intuitive even for a new user. The various tools listed one below the other on the left side is a well thought out layout.