Adobe has surprised some by moving towards a web app model for the crown jewel of Adobe: Photoshop. We review the new effort and see how viable it is for serious production.
Adobe’s Photoshop Express web site gives you the option to test drive with sample images, or sign up. Upon login, you get your very own photoshop URL, [email protected]. Adobe’s use of Flash Player for this application is not winning friends. Although the specs list Safari, Explorer and Firefox as compatible browsers, I got caught in a Flash Player installation loop with Firefox V2 (adobe says v2 is supported) and eventually gave up in disgust and moved back to Explorer… double whammy if that’s not your preferred browser.
A quick search on the net reveals PX works well on Linux (even with the chorus of Flash groans). Once inside, frustration was quelled by the interface’s similarity to both Bridge and Lightroom. This software is quick and easy to use, with intuitive interface design and obvious navigation.
Filling the Void
First step is to upload from hard drive(s), external and usb devices (including cameras). PX only takes JPEGs. Which can be limiting – but given the size of RAW files is understandable. Still this one point alone limits its use for professional photographers.
Adobe’s FAQ states that image uploads are restricted to 4000 pixels height/width and a 10 MB file size. Photos larger than 2880x 2880 pixels will be shrunk after editing. This allows more images per 2 Gigs of storage: Adobe is considering TIF format, but this doesn’t seem likely without overwhelming user demand or increased storage capacity.
Uploading is simple, yet kinda slow. Ten minutes for a 4.3 MB jpeg, 30 minutes for 11 files of mixed size, and slightly longer direct from the camera. The FAQ suggests you shouldn’t try to upload more than 100 files at a time. Well…we could not agree more!
PX detects duplicates and gives you options for removal, as well as creating new albums as you go. That’s all very neat. However, it’s inability to resize on import, or control file sizes once inside the application has proven frustrating for beta users, and Adobe are considering including these features for the public release. Navigating the image libraries and albums is straightforward, and you can even access metadata using the ‘i’ icon at the bottom right of screen. There is a fullscreen mode, which would be awesome, if enabling it didn’t disable the keyboard.
Now to the Fun Stuff
Hovering over images reveals a drop down menu, where selecting Edit Photo takes you into an exciting new world. The editing menu is broken into Basics, Tuning and Effects. Basics are standard: crop/rotate, auto correct, exposure, red-eye removal, touchup (straight from Lightroom, clone and heal function) and saturation.
Use the panel at the top to adjust by predetermined value ranges, or for finer tuning, use the sliders, then accept or reject edits. The bottom panel allows stepping backwards and forwards through edits so you can see your progress, but selective addition/removal of single edits in the chain isn’t possible, which could be a really useful function.
The Tuning menu includes white balance, highlights, fill light (for backlit images), sharpen and soft focus and all of these options have slider control (some less sensitive than others).
The Effects menu is BIG fun! Pop colour, hue, black and white, tint, sketch and distort all perform as expected. Pop Colour is my absolute favorite here: eye-drop a colour, adjust the (kinda clunky) fuzziness slider and watch your image transform. Then start layering other fx over the top and just play. Mostly the fx are really useful and great fun, but the sketch filter surely has to be one of the ugliest in the Photoshop stable… Yep.
Batch processing is not supported, which is a real shame. Creating and saving custom styles would be a welcome addition. CS integration is also not supported: no back and forth between Photoshop and PX (again, this is under review).
PX also allows import of images from external applications: Facebook, Picasa and Photobucket. The Facebook setup works really well (not really intuitive, with logouts and logins but hopefully that will be ironed out in Beta). It allows you to edit and manipulate images then re-import to your Facebook album as a separate image, leaving originals intact. This is image editing on the fly for applications lacking such tools.
Currently, there are no supported printing functions, but you can export images to email (send a link, which opens in a separate browser at original file size, with no logins/sign ups required), or choose to embed html links to link to blogs and webpages, giving you instant access to a mobile image library.
Note: Hotmail may identify these emails as spam/junk — there is no fix at the moment, but Adobe is aware of the problem.
Slideshow anyone?
Once you have completely ruined your friend’s snaps (but left your own looking lovely), you can show the world. The gallery space lets you view multiple images in standard single, or 2D and 3D grid/strip/ring slideshows. This space seems really slow to load (initially) in comparison to the library: viewing libraries and albums is remarkably quick and responsive.
Again, the interface is great. However, grid mode struggled with displaying images properly. It eventually caught up, but display proved fairly inconsistent in the time I played with it. But what a fun way to play with photos! It appears we have finally left the Page Turn in the last century where it belongs.
Users can also browse public galleries (beware of signing your images over for eternity once you go ‘public’) but again, they’re fairly slow, and search engines don’t allow partial search terms. This may become more of an issue when greater volumes of galleries are on offer, and one I’m sure Adobe will have to address.
Photoshop Express’s strength is its accessibility: not being anchored to a specific machine will ensure a high take-up. The free 2 gigs of storage doesn’t hurt either. Adobe’s entry into the freeware realm is intended to generate up-selling, but is also well overdue and very welcome (for Photoshop lovers like myself).
Adobe is off to a really good start with this application. The fast and responsive image editing and manipulation, combined with an easy-to-use interface makes it great fun, and should guarantee its place as a frontrunner in the online world. With the addition of more refined editing tools, a greater choice of file formats, file size/type control inside the application, and better integration with other Adobe apps , it’s future looks bright indeed.
About Rose Draper : Rose is a Photoshop and design expert based in Sydney. She has numerous feature film and production credits and also teaches.