Those who use PhotoShop on a regular basis usually purchase the full version of the program which is costly.  There is also PhotoShop Express which is a lower cost version meant for "casual" users.  Now there is a free online version of PhotoShop Express for those who wouldn’t even make use of those features.

According to Adobe, the software is now in public beta and allows users up to 2GB of online storage but provides basic photo editing only.  There is no support for layers or adding text to images and requires Flash player 9 to function.

You can synch it with Flickr, MySpace and Picasa; saved changes appear immediately but Flickr synching may take up to a few weeks.

The advantage of having it run on Flash player 9 means it will work on any system that has it installed be it, Windows, Mac OSX or Linux so it will serve everyone just fine.  A paid version of PhotoShop Express online is in the works that will include more storage and additional features.

However, some may find it limiting.  I can say the lack of text support or layers has already killed any use it may have had for me.  Those needing those features should look up SeaShore for Mac OSX or any number of options for Windows which include Paint.NET or PhotoPlus 6.

Maybe Adobe will eventually make a free downloadable version of PhotoShop Express Lite but I’m not going to hold my breath.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 9:01 am under Internet, Software.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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