Adobe plans to launch a free online photo-editing service called Photo Express. Although the company has not yet set a release date, Adobe senior vice president John Loiacono gave a brief demo of the product during his recent keynote at Photoshop World Las Vegas 2007. “The intent here is to make it very simplistic,” Loiacono told the audience, explaining that the product is intended for the mass market rather than for graphics professionals. Photo Express can crop images, perform white balances, and apply other basic tools. Entirely browser based, it runs on Flash, which is a common method of delivering applications over the Internet. (See “Computer in the Cloud.”)

Photo Express should be useful for bloggers and other people with basic but regular photo-editing needs. It looks as though it will provide more editing power than Google’s Picasa, but with a similarly basic interface.

Adobe’s move into free online services is interesting to watch. Earlier this year, Adobe launched Premiere Express, a free online basic video-editing service.