Photoshop: The popular editing tool goes free on the Web

[babylonsister]

Photoshop: The popular editing tool goes free on the Web
Adobe Systems' new Photoshop Express website hosts a basic version of its ubiquitous software that lets users edit and share digital images.
By Chris Gaylord | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

posted March 28, 2008 at 11:45 am EDT


Adobe Systems launched a new photo-editing website Thursday that blends its popular Photoshop software with the ease and community of social networks.

Photoshop Express which is now open to everyone as a "beta" test version, strips away both the complexity and the price tag of the original Photoshop. This free web-based editor offers tools for one-click cropping, color adjusting, and sharing.

Express comes from an impressive software pedigree. After years of being the industry standard, Photoshop is already the colloquial verb for manipulating images. But Photoshop Express is a far cry from the $649 professional Photoshop CS3. And that's the point.

"It's not trying to be 'Photoshop Online,' " says Geoff Baum, Adobe's director of Express products. Express targets the casual consumer – those who love taking pictures, but probably don't know what SLR stands for (it's single-lens reflex, in case you were wondering).

This point-and-shoot crowd has posted billions of images to online photo-sharing and social-networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook. Adobe hopes to reel in these millions of users with easy photo-editing tools and ways to connect all their photo-sharing favorites.

Users can upload images from their computer or grab pictures they've already posted to Photobucket, Facebook, or Picasa. Pictures can then be sorted into albums, arranged as slideshows, lightly polished, and shared with the world.

more...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p25s04-stct.html

[Maestro]

1. It's like the gateway drug to the more powerful version.

Actually, it just seems like Adobe wants some of the snapshot crowd that use apps like Irfan to post to social networking sites like MySpace and the like, but hey, coming from the Photoshop pedigree it is probably pretty good and the price is right. :)

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. I think they see a revenue stream

that is going to other places