Adobe Launches Free Version of Photoshop

On Friday, March 28th 2008 at 12:50 AM

By Andrei Pociu (View Profile)

The long awaited free version of Photoshop - Photoshop Express - has been released as an online tool for editing photos and storing them on the web. As expected, its functionality is not too advanced, but it allows you to crop, resize and remove the red-eye effect from pictures, among several other features.

The purpose of the online application is to introduce new users to the popular suite from Adobe, and it's expected to be largely used by members of social networks such as Facebook. To enhance photo sharing, Photoshop Express offers tools to embed pictures on social networks and other similar websites, but it also provides its own public album where the users can select which pictures they'd like to make available for public viewing, thus also taking a shot at Flickr.com.

The application is based on Flash 9 (the latest Flash version) and it takes full advantage of the newly introduced technology to instantaneously apply effects on pictures and enhance navigation through pictures.

Photoshop Express offers 2GB of storage, which is twice the capacity offered by Google's Picasa; Doug Mack, product manager at Adobe promises this will always be a free service, however fees may be introduced for users that need extra storing capacity.