Picture perfect: Adobe’s Photoshop Express is an online editing service that offers basic editing tools, shown here in the panel. When a person makes a change to a photo, a check mark appears next to the tool used. To remove the edit, the user simply clicks on the check mark.
Adobe
Adobe offers a free, scaled down version of its photo-editing software.
Today, when you take pictures with your digital camera, you have an inordinate number of options for online editing, storing, and sharing your shots. Thanks to improvements in Flash, popular graphics software, and the availability of fast broadband connections, a number of impressive online photo-editing sites have emerged in the past couple of years. Now Adobe is jumping into the fray with its new online photo-editing software called Photoshop Express. The service opened a test version to the public, which offers simple editing tools, syncs with Facebook, Picassa, and Photobucket, and provides two gigabytes of free storage.
Photoshop Express requires Flash Player 9 to run and works with all major browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. A user first uploads pictures from a hard drive to Adobe's servers, a process that takes a couple of minutes, depending on the speed of the Internet connection and the size and number of photos. Once uploaded, the photos can be edited with a simplistic editing toolbar that lets the user crop, adjust exposure, touch up blemishes, remove red eye, and change the color saturation. As well as these basics, Photoshop Express lets users fine-tune the color and lighting with controls such as white balance and a tool that sharpens blurry edges. In addition, a user can add more creative elements to a picture with a sketch tool and a distort feature.
In terms of editing, Adobe's offer isn't impressive. It lacks editing tools available in other online editors, including Picnik (used by the photo-sharing site Flickr), FotoFlexer, and Rsizr. Rsizr, for instance, offers an innovative tool that can compress and expand images without distorting them. Moreover, this initial version of Photoshop Express comes up short in terms of storage. Sites like Flickr and Photobucket offer unlimited storage, albeit for a price. (Express shouldn't be compared with Adobe Photoshop C3, the professional editing suite that can cost nearly $1,000, or Photoshop Elements, desktop editing software for under $100, because it's free and vying for a different audience.)
These are just the early days for Photoshop Express, notes Geoff Baum, director of express solutions at Adobe, who pitched the idea of Web-based products about two years ago. "It's not quite there yet," he says. In the coming months, the company will offer more features, depending on user feedback, as well as more storage and the ability to synchronize photo libraries with additional websites. One particular feature that will be available soon, he notes, will be access to a printing service.
Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder aim to simplify the construction of rich Internet applications.
An advanced Web-based editing tool is connecting to sites across the Internet.
Adobe adds Flash, video, and Web services to its venerable Acrobat software.
TOS for PS Express - "publicly accessible areas"
8. Use of Your Content.
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.
b.) “Publicly accessible” areas of the Services are those areas of the Adobe network of properties that are intended by Adobe to be available to the general public. However, publicly accessible areas of the Services do not include Services intended for private communication or areas off the Adobe network of properties such as portions of World Wide Web sites that are accessible via hypertext or other links but are not hosted or served by Adobe.
Calling this offering Photoshop is like calling a tricycle a Harley. You are better off using Picaso.
What is the battery "Memory Effect"?
Ni-Cd batteries, and to a lesser extent Ni-MH batteries, suffer from what's called the "memory effect". What this means is that if a battery is repeatedly only partially discharged before recharging, the battery "forgets" that it has the capacity to further discharge all the way down. To illustrate: If you, on a regular basis, fully charge your battery and then use only 50% of its capacity before the next recharge, eventually the battery will become unaware of its extra 50% capacity which has remained unused. The battery will remain functional, but only at 50% of its original capacity. The way to avoid the dreaded "memory effect" is to fully cycle (fully charge and then fully discharge) the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Batteries can be discharged by unplugging the device's AC adapter and letting the device run on the battery until it ceases to function. This will insure your battery remains healthy
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed
whoisvaibhav
2 Comments
Problem with Terms of Use
Adobe Photoshop Express is receiving a lot of bad press because one particular clause in their TOS basically says that they own any photos placed on their service and can do whatever they want with it.
See here for details
Reply