Geek Tested:

Need a Quick Photo Fix? Photoshop Express to the Rescue!

Posted 04/01/08 at 10:56:50 PM by Mark Soper

Photoshop Express Brings Photo Editing as Close as Your Browser

If you need quick fixes for some photos and don't have a photo editor installed on the system du jour, what can you do? Adobe has the solution: Photoshop Express. Photoshop Express is a free web-based photo editing, uploading, and sharing solution. Get started here.

Register or Test Drive - Your Choice!

You don't need to register to give Photoshop Express a try. After you enter the site, click the Test Drive button to work with a wide variety of existing photos already on the site. You can't save your changes, but you can see for yourself what it can do. When you register, you can upload your own photos (you get 2GB of space), browse galleries, and use Photoshop Express's wide variety of photo repair tools to fix common problems.

Picture Tools

To rotate, e-mail, link, embed, download, or use a picture in other ways, just click it and select the option desired.

Basic Picture Editing

To edit a photo with problems (or just to change it for fun), select Edit Photo. Basic changes include:

- Crop & Rotate supports traditional photo sizes, and features an adjustable grid for straightening crooked photos.
- Other adjustments, such as Auto Correct, Exposure, and Saturation, offer a variety of previews of different adjustment levels. As you move your mouse across the previews, the main photo changes accordingly.
- Touchup offers a low-end version of Adobe's healing brush.
- Red-Eye Removal provides one-click removal of you-know-what.

Beyond the Basics

The Tuning menu provides a variety of preset adjustments for:

- White balance
- Highlights
- Fill light
- Sharpening
- Soft focus.

The Effects menu adjusts:

- Color
- Hue
- Tint
- Sketch effects
- Distortions
- Black and white conversions

Sharing Your Photos

You can specify which of your albums to share using the My Gallery menu. You can also use Photoshop Express to edit photos you have displayed on other popular sites including Facebook, Photobucket, or Picasa.

Photoshop Express, a Photoshop Elements Killer?

That's like asking if apple eaters never try oranges.

Photoshop Express puts a nice combination of features and ease of use at your fingertips - but if you need to really fix up a bad photo, you'll miss familiar tools like Levels, white balance by skin tone, and others.

Photoshop Express can't use TIFF or RAW files, either: it's only for JPEG photos. You can't upload anything larger than 10MP or 4000 pixels in height and width: anything larger than 2880x2880 is resized, and don't try to feed it more than 100 photos at a time.

It's designed for Windows XP, Vista, MacOS 10.4 or later, 1024x768 or larger screen, IE 6 or 7, Firefox 2 or later, or Safari 3.0.4 on Macs (if you're trying Safari 3.1 for Windows, tell us - and Adobe - if Photoshop Express works for you).

It's no application killer, but it's a handy extension to whatever you're using now that can bail you out of a tight spot, give you another place to stash some photos, and provides a generally responsive way to have some fun with your pictures. It's a beta, so it can only get better. And best of all, it's web-based, so it's always ready.

COMMENTS:11

TAGS:

COMMENTS

Thanks to all of you, Adobe's changing course
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Thu, 04/03/2008 - 8:24am

Adobe's gotten an earful from potential Photoshop Express users like you - and they're in the process of rewriting the terms of service. Good job! Read more about it at http://www.maximumpc.com/article/read_a_good_or_bad_eula_or_terms_of_service_lately
--------------------------------------------
It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.

Login or register to post comments

No way man
Submitted by Primus2112 on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 4:53pm

Besides the above points like giving up certain rights to images I am sure this is also to steer people away from their competition- but I imagine other popular paint programs will follow suit and create a online version for themselves.

Interesting Adobe - but no thanks.

Login or register to post comments

Gimp?
Submitted by TheDorkSide on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 11:16am

Ya think Adobe's getting nervous about the Gimp? It's free and has similar features. I've been using it and it's fine for the regular schmuck in my opinion.

Login or register to post comments

RE: Gimp?
Submitted by wolf17 on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 1:44pm

Yeah and isnt there a GIMPshop plugin to make GIMP look like photoshop? lol yeah adobe prolly should be getting nervous.. lol

Login or register to post comments

Adobe PS Express
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 10:49am

Wow what a license. Why don't companies offer the end user or the consumer a license like that? This is getting ridiculous. The companies give us little to zero privileges in their license agreements but when they give themselves tons of privileges.

I hope they make money but I won't be using their express software. I'm no retard.

I stand corrected and no longer applaud Adobe for the Express software. They are just being to greedy. They do make good software though.

Login or register to post comments

Adobe EULAs
Submitted by mortar on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 7:28pm

Adobe has a reputation for being bloody control freaks. Take a look at the EULA for any of the their Creative Suites and you'll find a part that basically says, if you install any part of the suite on a computer, you can't install other parts on a different computer, even if it's yours. That really sucks.

I have their Production Studio Premium suite and I want to install part of it on my desktop and other parts on my laptop. Not only can't I do that legally, they fixed it so your computer MUST contact Adobe so they can sniff your system to make sure your following the rules. Nice.

Login or register to post comments

Hah
Submitted by sc123 on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 5:43am

"Adobe has the solution"? Really? This software blows. It can only edit jpg files - as you mention, and can only perform extremely limited image editing tasks. Photoshop software that doesn't let you even draw, splice or use layers shouldn't be called Photoshop. This is a pretty version of what is already available in half a dozen places. Did you read the Terms of Use????

From the Terms of Use:
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.

Perhaps you should re-evaluate PS Express. I don't know about you, but I'm not giving my photos to Adobe perpetually and irrevocably.

Login or register to post comments

Not so good for sharing....
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 7:24am

You make a good point. To avoid "giving" your pix to Adobe, make sure you don't mark your folders as shared.

If you're wanting to protect your online content while you share it, you're better off with Flickr, where you can control the rights granted.
----------------------------------------
It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.

Login or register to post comments

Photoshop
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 04/01/2008 - 10:21pm

Hey a version of Photoshop that will never need to be cracked and shared on Bittorrent.

Don't need it. I think every geek out there already has a flavor of Photoshop on his or her pc, weather it be pirated or legit.

Perhaps they think they'll get money from advertising and most users will opt to use this rather than to spend the time it takes to download and crack a pirated version. I really don't need all pro filters and this should work fine for me.

Seems like a good idea. Photoshop is the most pirated piece of software next to Windows. About time a company has discovered a way to provide people with working software that they were'nt going to pay for anyway but at least they will still get payed for their labor.

Perhaps games are next. Go ahead Pirate a pc game. Games will have advertising in them minus copy protection. At least the makers will get paid.

So to me this story is more about recovering profits from piracy without wasting time and money on legal action. This is alot more elegant.

I applaud Adobe.

Login or register to post comments

Until someone finally
Submitted by N25PHILLY on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 11:04am

Until someone finally figures out a way to send 100,000 volts of electricity through someone's keyboard when they pirate something this will have to do.

Login or register to post comments

/agree
Submitted by DRAGONWEEZEL on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 8:32am

They are just capitalizing on their popularity. This "service" is the same as myspace, flicker, photobucket, picassa, etc..

It sure as hell doesn't come close to replacing my pira er uhm... Evaluation copy of Adobe's fantastic image editing software.

I honestly hope they do somehow recieve something for this effort, I was just sad when they called it photoshop, it should have been "Adobe's online version of Picassa" or something.

THERE ARE ONLY 11 TYPES OF PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD. Those that think binary jokes are funny, those that don't, and those that don't know binary

Login or register to post comments