Adobe launches free web Photoshop

Photoshop Express offers users up to 2GB storage space and is interoperable with other photo-sharing websites like Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa. According to a report on GigaOM, Doug Mack, Adobe's VP of consumer and hosted solutions said Adobe had  'built out a hosting infrastructure to support Express starting a year ago'. The report also notes that Adobe would be likely to use this platform in the future to add premium services to its flagship design package which includes Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Setting up your own account and claiming your 2GB of storage is easy. Signing up is straightforward, and you'll quickly realise that Photoshop Express is only designed for the US at the moment as there are no other choices in the drop down for country (Adobe says performance may suffer for users in other countries, but in my testing the site worked well). Importing your own photos is as easy as clicking the 'Upload Photos' button. Photoshop Express bizarrely only accepts JPEGs, not even Photoshop's own native PSD format, so don't go trying to upload any other file formats.

I also experimented with the Facebook integration, and by allowing Facebook to access your Photoshop Express library (and vice-versa) you can pull photos out of your Facebook account and edit them. Edited files then reappear in your Facebook My Photos area. But a word of warning, if you make changes to photos and save them, Facebook actually creates a duplicate image, rather than replacing the original. If you're particular, you'll need to delete the originals from Facebook. Perhaps Facebook will work with Adobe to introduce a photo "versions" feature that allows the original version to be stored for safe backup, but not shown in your album.

Basic editing functions in Photoshop Express include the ability to crop, rotate, fix red-eye, and touch-up. There are also more sophisticated tools for tuning your image including white balance, fill light, sharpen and soft focus. And it couldn't be called 'Photoshop' unless the obligatory effects were present. While not as complete as in Photoshop you can use Photoshop Express to 'pop colours', change the hue, tint and distort your images.

All in all Photoshop Express presents a nice interface to basic editing and cataloguing of photos. I don't think I'm ready to move from Aperture to Express just yet, but its certainly got potential and is worth a look.