Photoshop Express Beta Review

When Photoshop launches a free online photo editor, people pay attention. A company best known for its beloved (but pricy) photo editing software is bound to impress when it enters the online photo editing realm, right? Well, read this review of the just-launched free Photoshop service to find out why it doesn't match up to the competition.

Where Photoshop Express Falls Short

There are already several wonderful free online photo editors, so Photoshop is behind the game on this. In my mind, that means they should back it up with a stellar product. Beta or not, the Photoshop name is the best thing this service has going for it. Here are the key areas where it falls short:

• There is no resize option. Let me say that again in case you're stunned. There is no resize. What?
• It is extremely slow to load. It's possible the site could be busy as word gets out about the launch, but other functions seemed speedy. It took an entire minute to upload a single 2.5-megapixel image, and two minutes for a 4-megapixel image. That can become painful for uploading large galleries from your hard drive.
• It is only available to U.S. residents. Again, what?
• There seems to be very few ways to browse the public galleries, essentially just alphabetically, last modified and last created.
• When you sign up, any photos uploaded for public viewing you will "grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license." As in they can use it anywhere, now and forever, and pass that right on to others. That may well be commonplace on sites, but it's still something to consider.
• It also falls short simply by not introducing much that is new. There are other services with far more image editing enhancements, and ones that are speedier for basic edits. There are also sites that are better for sharing photos with friends (can anyone say Flickr?).

The Photoshop Express Design and Interface

The Express service does excel in design and ease of use. The site itself is attractive, with a clean black background and very little to clutter the pages and distract.

For a novice photo editor, this is an ideal site to use. Once logged in, it is quite obvious where to click to edit a photo. Once you're in the photo editing section, there is also little to confuse.

Editing Features of Photoshop Express

Here is a list of the editing options and aspects of photos that can be altered, according to the Express FAQ:

• Crop & Rotate
• Auto Correct either with automatic, one-click, optimal lighting and contrast adjustment.
• Exposure
• Red-Eye Removal
• Touchup—Remove scratches and other imperfections.
• Saturation to ramp up the colors to blinding brightness, dampen them down to black and white, or anywhere in between.
• White Balance
• Highlight
• Fill Light to brighten the dark area without overbrightening the background.
• Sharpen
• Soft Focus
• Hue
• Black & White
• Tint
• Sketch
• Distort

Photoshop Express Review in Summary

Hopefully since this is beta, Photoshop will look for a way to stand out from the competition. Still, even a beta release should have some of the core options such as resizing and being available globally.

It's certainly worth playing around in just for curiosity's sake, and if you don't have to resize (anyone who's editing for web posting or email sharing well) or use elaborate effects, you will enjoy the simplicity of the Photoshop Express editor.

Everyone else might need to wait for Photoshop Express to get out of beta.