Adobe Puts Free Photoshop Online

Amit Agarwal writes "Adobe today launched a basic version of Adobe Photoshop available for free online. Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. According to Yahoo! News, Adobe says providing Photoshop Express for free is part marketing and part a strategy to create up-sell opportunities. It hopes some customers will move from it to boxed software like its $99 Photoshop Elements or to a subscription-based version of Express that's in the works."

Comments

You will lose your copyright on your pictures..

[New_Age_Reform_Act]

Read the ToS:

Section 8 (a):

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

Thanks I will stick with GIMP instead.

Of course, if you need free stuff, there is always The Pirate Bay.

Re:You will lose your copyright on your pictures..

[The End Of Days]

...that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services... Reading comprehension FTW!

Sounds like Picnik

[Skidge]

Sounds kind of like Picnik, which provides free basic photo editing and is integrated directly into Flickr. It's pretty handy for doing some tweaks on your photos. Picnik has some advanced, paying-account-required features, though, so maybe Photoshop Express will be better in that regard.

Signed up to see what the fuss was about.

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Here is what I have noticed so far.

Requires Flash 9. to install.
They have a notice that basically says
Account creation is heavy today it may take 60 minutes to recieve your e-mail.

Mine (done 4 min. ago) took about 1 min.

Super fast uploading! 1 3mb pic took all of 3 seconds to upload!

Very basic editing tools, but has a few cool distortion features. One neat thing to note is links to external sites such as Picassa, Photobucket and Phacebook! (er uh Facebook!)

Gallery and gallery sharing is neat, but slow (probably due to high use right now)
This won't come close to replacing your pirated versions of PS you all have at home. It'll be interesting to see if they add new tools or leave it as is.

Re:Adobe Photoshop Express

[Ford Prefect]

I think it's a great idea to give people a taste of what Photoshop is like.

... Except it's nothing whatsoever like Photoshop. At all.

I had a quick go at 'editing' a photo in the test-drive thing, and there didn't seem any way of actually drawing anything. I'd say it's much closer in concept to a drastically simplified Photoshop Lightroom - it's even got the same colour scheme and vague general layout. Except where Lightroom will manage untold gigabytes of photos on your own computer, doing on-the-fly conversions and adjustments from raw format, Express looks more like an advanced, online photo management system.

It's definitely not Photoshop Photoshop.

Adobe Online Productivity Office

[PortHaven]

Adobe's Online Office Productivity Suite:

Photoshop Express (Photo Editor)
https://www.photoshop.com/express

Buzzword (Word Processor)
http://www.buzzword.com/

Sliderocket (Presentation Software)
http://www.sliderocket.com/

Blist (Spreadsheet)
http://www.blist.com/

***

Did you buy stock? I did a while ago... :)

Re:Already Free

[chexy]

If your on a windows system why not use Paint.net http://www.getpaint.net/

Re:Already Free

[wellmington]

Probably a flame, but I'll bite.
What specifically can you do in Photoshop that I can't do in Gimp? Its probably just a matter of what you're used to. I grew up on gimp. If you stuck me in front of a Photoshop rig, there is very little chance that I would be able to do ANYTHING with it. CMYK, Pantone in particular but mostly it's down to the horrible interface that GIMP comes with. Gimp is basically a programmers idea of how a creative tool should look.

Re:Already Free

[g00nsquad]

By the way - as a supplement to the comment above, here is a simple example of the difference between 8 bit and 16 bit colour:

Benefits Of Working With 16-Bit Images In Photoshop, Page 2

Re:Already Free

[g00nsquad]

That's fine but off-topic. You asked what specifically Photoshop can do that GIMP cannot, I responded with two items, which you then attempted to bin by relegating them to the status of irrelevant. I shoot stitched panoramic landscapes and I would say the largest transition in image quality for me was when I made the jump from using 8 bit jpgs as my base exposures to 12 bit Canon RAW converted to 16 bit TIFF. 16 bit image support is very relevant to me, not so relevant to you, but its relevance to either of us individually doesn't negate its value.

Re:Already Free

[Ferzelic]

I can't seem to find the ability to create layer filters that change based on the content of the layer.

Current versions of GIMP don't have filter layers. Valid point.
(Though they are only a convenience, in that you can achieve the same effects with regular filters, just not in a non-destructive way.)

I also can't find the slice

Image -> Transform -> Guillotine.
If you want it to create the HTML code for you as well, there are several plugins you can download (eg Py-Slice).

or save for web tool.
Where are the file optimization settings?

Save as -> GIF, PNG or JPG. Adjustments are in the save dialog.
Toggle the preview checkbox for lossy-compressed formats such as JPG.

How do you export as a PDF?

I'll grant you there's no built-in function for it, but I also can't conceive of a useful reason for doing so.
Converting a single bitmap image into a PDF is a grossly inefficient operation for no benefit.
(Where the file format can sensibly be exported to PDF, most open source software does provide it; eg Inkscape.)

Where is the ability to record actions and execute them on folders/files?

Instead of macros, GIMP is fully scriptable. Considerably less convenient, but much more powerful.
(Of course, in an ideal world GIMP would support both.)

How do I go to full screen with the ability to drag the canvas anywhere on screen that I want?

Uh, View -> Fullscreen? Middle-click drags the canvas.

Where is the ability to dock my tool windows?

Drag the dialog to a dock window. You get two by default: the main toolbox and Layers/Channels/Paths.
You can have one or many. Predefined sets are available under Dialogs -> Create New Dock

You actually send RGB files to print?

Another valid point. Lack of proper color control is a well-known deficiency with GIMP.
(It does now support color profiles, but it's a bit of a hack.)

I wouldn't use it for professional print purposes; but for my personal artwork, yeah, I have sent RGB for print. I've got a local print shop that does a really good job of converting screen-space color. Good enough for my needs, and it's not like my home PC has a color-calibrated monitor anyway.

Lack of CMYK support and 16-bit+ color are real legitimate complaints against GIMP. I'll grant you filter layers too, as they would be handy (and are in development). Most other complaints are just unfamiliarity with the interface.

Here are my three main gripes about Photoshop's interface:

• Why is undo (ctrl-Z) single-level by default? If I'm using a tablet, one pen stroke usually ends up as multiple steps. Why do I have to hold down ctrl-ALT-Z?
• Why am I forced to select something before doing most operations? If nothing is selected, surely it's logical I want to do it on the whole image.
• What is Photoshop's equivalent to "Alpha to Selection", which I use all the time? (I'm sure it has one but damned if I can find it)

Want me to go on?