eLearning Service

Adobe’s free online image editor, Photoshop Express, was released today in public beta. 

Aimed at the casual rather than the professional photographer, the editor leaves out many of the tools users of the full-fledged Photoshop are accustomed to, but includes many that will help it compete with other free image editors like Picnik and FotoFlexer.

Adobe’s name recognition and status as a long-time leader in pro photography technology should be enough to attract the crowds, says Wired Blog Network.

The service also integrates with a number of photo-sharing websites, they note, enabling the user to push and pull photos from Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa.  Flickr may be available after initial beta testing.

Photoshop Express offers two gigabytes of online storage space and requires Flash Player 9.  Anyone who has used Photoshop or Photoshop Elements should find the interface familiar and find many of the expected tools such as cropping, red eye correction, sharpening, touchup and more.

Mashable’s Stan Schroeder reviews Photoshop Express, noting some important shortcomings.   

“If Photoshop is your bread and butter, don’t expect to be using Express even for the simplest of tasks.  On the other hand, I must admit that Photoshop Express’ GUI is really good looking (albeit a little slow on occasion), and that it offers quite a lot of options: auto retouching, cropping, rotating, red eye removal, white balancing, and sharpening (very important), among others. There’s also a couple of effects available: you can distort the image, apply hue and saturation filters, and there are even some artistic filters like sketch. On top of all that, Express doubles as a photo organizer, with a solid photo gallery (you get 2 GBs of storage with your free account), and the ability to connect with social sites such as Facebook, Photobucket or Picasa,” he says.