Adobe Photoshop For Free!

Not quite. It's Adobe. It's free. But it's not quite Photoshop. A few weeks ago Adobe launched Adobe Photoshop Express beta. I am a big fan of their products such as Photoshop and Premiere. So when they launched this beta, I was in.

Two things stand out immediately. First, this is free. Second, it's 100% web-based. There's no software that you need to download so you can run it from any computer (mac or pc) with no problem. Adobe has started making some big moves into what they call "rich internet applications" (RIA). These are websites that are made to work and feel like regular desktop applications except with the benefit of being on the web (or the benefit of not being tied to Microsoft as some may see this).

Who Is This Tool For?
You ever wonder when they designed the spork, who their target audience was? That was my first impression when I visited the site. Don't get me wrong, as far as websites, it's functionality is quite advanced. But if you are used to Photoshop, or even their skimped down Photoshop Elements, you will be disappointed. This spork was not designed for you.

The audience as I see it are people who want an effective way to share photos. Their are two advantages that I see. First, you have a minimal tool set to improve the photos. Some of them are pretty intuitive such as the 'Red-Eye Removal'. Others don't seem to work well at all like the 'Sharpen'. But these are better than some other online photo gallery options. Second, they have built some REALLY impressive sharing capabilities into this with my beloved Facebook and with the extremely helpful Picasa. So if you don't want to publish directly through the gallery they give you, you can publish through other sites that Adobe has built-in to this.

Show Me the Goods
I took my Facebook photos, imported them from Photoshop Express, created an album, gave Adobe lots of permission to display this over the web, and they gave me a link. Here's the end result:
http://nwright.photoshop.com

What I Think
I want to like this product a lot, but I don't see using it a ton. I don't want to spend the time to clean up photos for the web. If there is anything that I really want to spend the time to clean up, I'lll use a serious program such as Photoshop to do it. As for sharing, it excels, but the application is not enough by itself to draw people to use it frequently. Until Adobe starts creating a suite of online apps to work together, this one will be one of the slickest sporks on the web.