At first glance, the new Adobe Photoshop Express service launched on Thursday for people living (only) in the United States is a slick, attractive, and smooth experience for editing images. However, there are several features that it lacks which cause conflicts if you need a free photo editing program or want to make the switch from another one.

Background

The main aspect of the post is to share how Photoshop Express will benefit you – the blogger. Adobe set out to create this Flash-based system for people that didn’t need a whole lot of tools, but were already using a free editing program such as Picasa or another freeware/online editor (or are contemplating purchasing Photoshop). In my opinion, it’s a stripped-down Photoshop Elements.

Editing, Uploading, and Sharing

Like previously mentioned, it is extremely easy to upload, organize, and edit your photos. Some of the gripes that I had included the slow loading times even on a fast internet connection. Dial-up users will find that they are staring at a loading bar for a long time while trying to upload or edit photos. Other than the loading time, the uploading process went smoothly and compared to the “rendering” time, the upload speed was relatively quick. In the editing field, there is no option to draw or “paint” on the images. It wasn’t designed to do this, so it is a minor inconvenience.

Photo Uploader 

The editing options shown on the left side of the page are divided into three easy-to-follow areas: Basics – Crop & Rotate, Auto Correct, Exposure, Red-Eye Removal, Touchup, and Saturation; Tuning – White Balance, Highlight, Fill Light, Sharpen, and Soft Focus; Effects – Pop Color, Hue, Black & White, Tint, Sketch, and Distort.

As you can see in the images, the photo editing is made extremely simple, with easy to find buttons for rotating, resizing, redoing, and reverting back to the original image. 

Editing Area 

For bloggers and people that need online storage, 2GB have been included which is a decent amount of storage but not as much as other free services. In the future, they plan on incorporating an upgradeable service for those wanting more storage.

You are able to upload photos or share them with users of Facebook, Picasa, and Photobucket by default in the sidebar. Users are able to share their photos with other members by selecting them and marking them to share with others in albums. 

Multiple Site Uploading and Sharing 

In addition, photos can be viewed in multiple sizes and formats or as a slideshow. Everything in the interface fits perfectly, but as with most sites built in Flash, contain a slight delay between switching modes. 

Slideshow Mode 

Terms

To protect users’ rights, a privacy and terms policy has been set up, and should be thoroughly read before joining and uploading your photos. Other early adopters of Photoshop Express have addressed their concerns over the right for Apple to use their images. It mainly pertains to the publicly viewable area, or the main page where users’ photos are shown.

8. Use of Your Content.

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Photoshop Express?

Adobe Photoshop Express is an online rich Internet application (RIA) where you can polish, sort, store, and show off up to 2GB of photos. Crop, rotate, smudge, tweak, twirl, pinch, correct — or any combination you like. And when we say “show,” we’re talking more than good old slideshows. We’re talking about molding your photos into cubes and shapes — the stuff that will make your friends think you’re a pro.

Who should use Photoshop Express?

Anyone who wants a quick, easy, and free way to fix and enhance digital photos and share them online in multiple ways.
How is Photoshop Express different from Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Extended, and Photoshop Elements software products?
Unlike Adobe’s Photoshop software products, Photoshop Express is an online, registration-based destination for editing, enhancing, and sharing photos. It’s free and easy to use and built on the gold standard Photoshop technology for the best possible results. Users can get in, make quick edits, and get out again, fixing and enhancing photos quickly and sharing them, including showing off on their favorite social networking sites, blogs, and the Photoshop Express Galleries.

What languages is the Photoshop Express beta available in?

The preview of Photoshop Express is currently available only in English.

Can I get any technical support?

Technical support is not provided, other than the user-to-user community forums, which members of the Photoshop Express team will be participating in actively.

Requirements

You need to have an Internet connection (broadband or faster is recommended), Flash Player 9 installed, as well as a browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and others are supported). An email address is required for uploading and sharing photos. Currently, the Beta version is only available for English-speaking users in the United States

Tutorial

Demonstration from The Photoshop Insider Blog

In review, the new application is good for people that work across multiple computers and need access to a photo sharing/editor but do not need to edit photos as part of their job. The appearance is extremely well done for any web program and does exactly what it was intended to do.

Remember, Photoshop Express is by no means a program for replacing a desktop-based editor such as Photoshop or free alternatives such as Paint.NET. It was created solely for the process of uploading, sharing, and quickly editing personal photos.

Test the service out and post your comments about it – will you make the switch to primarily using this for your everyday blogging needs or is it unsuitable for your particular needs?

Try Adobe Photoshop Express