What is Adobe PhotoShop Express?
It is a free web-based version of PhotoShop with a limited set of features. Here is the web site.
What are some of the Features of Express?
There are quite a few very cool features for editing a photo (cropping, red eye touch up, sharpening, balancing, sketching, distorting, and more), embedding a photo on a blog or web site, emailing a photo, setting up a public gallery for viewing photos, and downloading the touched up photo back to your computer.
This picture shows the editing options on the left side. I was cropping a picture when this screen shot was taken.
The picture of one of our backyard flowers at the top of this blog entry is an embedded link from my picture gallery on Express.
Background
There are new applications becoming available (and also just now becoming interesting to YeOldeTechy) that allow use via the Web. This means that instead of loading the application (in this case PhotoShop) on your computer, you simply use it from a central location.
Rent an app.....a concept I first heard of when I was part of a startup in 1995. THAT is a story in itself...
This is a very interesting and powerful use of the Internet.
YeOldeTechy PhotoShop Tasks
I use PhotoShop Elements 4.0 for a lot of my Blog work.
The tasks I complete with PhotoShop are very basic, but, they suit my current needs / expertise.
They consist of the following:
1. I crop the photo or picture
2. I compress the photo or picture to save space on my Blogs and Web Site (Save for Web feature)
3. I upload the photo or picture to my Blog or Web Site.
4. It would be good if I could access my photos on Flickr.
Lets see how Adobe PhotoShop Express can meet my current needs.
What I Learned Today
Before I start...
Adobe PhotoShop Express is a very cool application, but, I found out it takes a long time (15 minutes or more) to implement the changes I made in my photo.
It also does not allow one to "save as", which is very irritating. I worked around this by uploading three of the same picture. One I kept as the "original" (see top photo), one I cropped, and one I "popped" a pretty green color.
1. I can crop a photo.
Here is the cropped version. I had to hit the checkmark to save my changes...something I am still getting used to in PhotoShop Elements...arrrggghh.
Note that I was not asked to "Save as" which I would have preferred.
2. Compress the Photo
I do not need to compress if I can embed. The pictures on this Blog were all embedded. Very cool.
For fun, I "popped" a color and saved the photo with the flower a pretty green color now.
That again took a lot of time to update. So the virtue I am learning here is patience.
Lets try a link to my nice green flower? That works....but I like to embed. Going off the Blog takes time away from your reading my wonderful prose.
I can now get more creative with my photos...so keep checking in as I refine my photo enhancing skills!
3. Upload to Blog or Web site
I was hoping the embed would seamlessly take care of this. Yup. It is very easy to grab the embed code and paste it on your blog or web site. Cool.
4. Link to Flickr
It does not yet link to Flickr...only Facebook, Picassa and Photobucket.
YeOldeTechy's Summary
There are some issues with the implementation, but, hey, it is BETA, so that is understandable.
I really like the concept, and will use this as much as I can going forward.
Stay tuned for updates as I test this more over the weeks to come.
Here is an Album I have made available for public viewing:
When I clicked on the Album photo above, I got a Security warning telling me the the certificate was for photoshop.com when I was being directed to yeoldetechy.photoshop.com.
Perhaps this an area that Adobe needs to address in the near future.
I clicked OK to allow connection...and everything worked fine. Note you need Flash 9.0 to make all this work...but that is easy to get from Adobe.com.
