Adobe released Photoshop Express to the masses - online as a beta web service. I wandered over there and took a look at it. It has its ups and downs, but for the most part I think it's a pretty good offering. Some initial critiques suggest that it's a pretty decent offering.
You're going to need an email account to sign up. After you've validated the email account you can start working with the service. The first thing I did was upload a picture that I took of the tree in my front yard on a rainy day.
It's your standard picture.
After you've uploaded your picture to your library, you can select from a variety of actions to take with your uploaded image.
I chose to edit the image and use a number of the available edits. Here's a screenshot of the editing screen using the autocorrect feature.
By hovering over the smaller boxes located at the top of the workspace, you can instantly see the effect applied to your image. All told I applied autocorrect, exposure, pop color, and sketch effects to my photo. In the end, this is what I ended up with:
Not bad, as far as I'm concerned. Once you're done, you can email it, embed it, or download it, to name a few options. I chose to download it to my laptop.
Overall, I think this service is a pretty good deal to the average user. It's very simple to use, available wherever there is a connection to the Internet ( I used the wi-fi connection at my local library ) and, of course you can't beat the fact that it is FREE. This is great for those unwilling to shell out $100 - $800 for software belonging to the Photoshop family.
On the downside ( I gotta be fair ) you may only use JPEG images with Photoshop Express. That is a bit of a limitation, but most consumers will upload images taken using their digital cameras, so that shouldn't be a huge problem.
Photoshop Express allows you 2 GB of storage space. I imagine that it won't be long before people will exhaust that allocation. I expect that after a period of time a premium account option will be rolled out so that people will be able to purchase accounts with more storage space and perhaps, other types of effects.
You're going to need an email account to sign up. After you've validated the email account you can start working with the service. The first thing I did was upload a picture that I took of the tree in my front yard on a rainy day.
It's your standard picture.
After you've uploaded your picture to your library, you can select from a variety of actions to take with your uploaded image.
I chose to edit the image and use a number of the available edits. Here's a screenshot of the editing screen using the autocorrect feature.
By hovering over the smaller boxes located at the top of the workspace, you can instantly see the effect applied to your image. All told I applied autocorrect, exposure, pop color, and sketch effects to my photo. In the end, this is what I ended up with:
Not bad, as far as I'm concerned. Once you're done, you can email it, embed it, or download it, to name a few options. I chose to download it to my laptop.
Overall, I think this service is a pretty good deal to the average user. It's very simple to use, available wherever there is a connection to the Internet ( I used the wi-fi connection at my local library ) and, of course you can't beat the fact that it is FREE. This is great for those unwilling to shell out $100 - $800 for software belonging to the Photoshop family.
On the downside ( I gotta be fair ) you may only use JPEG images with Photoshop Express. That is a bit of a limitation, but most consumers will upload images taken using their digital cameras, so that shouldn't be a huge problem.
Photoshop Express allows you 2 GB of storage space. I imagine that it won't be long before people will exhaust that allocation. I expect that after a period of time a premium account option will be rolled out so that people will be able to purchase accounts with more storage space and perhaps, other types of effects.
This is very cool!! I read somewhere, though, that they retain the rights to use every image uploaded. It's a great thing, the ability to mess with images online like this. I'm just learning to use Photoshop CS3 and I'm really not good at anything that requires drawing, like dodging and burning. So, maybe something like this online thing is for me! I'm going to go check it out.