Adobe Previews Photoshop Express Web App To PS World Audience

No beta has yet been made available, and all anyone in the blogosphere is currently running on is more or less a single JPEG, yet one can’t help but sense that, as in has in the world of local, hard disk-based photo editors, Adobe, despite arriving late to the mark, will quickly find itself standing in the winners circle once again, this time on the Web.

Photoshop Express, a kind of Elements for the “Net set” (what terribly poor wit, eh?), was debuted in “preview” fashion to an audience at Photoshop World (where else?), and I must say, I’m liking very much the sample image currently being passed around.

The screenshot shows Express to be rather sparse in layout (kind of a good thing, actually), with its basic toolset assembled in a kind of iTunes-like menu bar, positioned to the left of the main image space. Options for rotation and cropping, altering white balance, touchup, more advanced tuning, and things dubbed “Fun” are all present, making possible general changes the average photog enjoys doing to their digital images. Nothing too complex here. Just the essentials. Bravo to Adobe for making it so.

Of course, I should state that this debut is by no means a groundbreaking development. There are several other image editors on the Web that can perform many of the same tasks. (Picnik is one of the more pleasurable to use, in my view.) But Adobe doesn’t seem to gloss things over with PS Express as do some other Web 2.0 creations of the same variety.

The environment inside Express appears almost semi-professional (though, again, it’s sparse in terms of features as opposed to any local, desktop-based equivalent provided by the company). Everything around the main image window is shrouded in a dark hue and arranged relatively conservatively, allowing one’s photos to be the sole subject of one’s attention.

And because there’s such great open space within the Express application at present, there’s room for expansion. I would caution Adobe to add features slowly, however, as it would be regrettable to find Express venture from its role as a basic utility to a bloated, slow, confusing application for the average user.

I look forward to seeing more of Adobe Photoshop Express, and hope that those working on the project insist on maintaining its elegance.

What do you think of the preview?