Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 02:10 PM

The big news flying around blogland today is that Photoshop has finally made a small free version of their famous program available to everyone online (everyone in the US that is).  Adobe Photoshop Express.  I tested it out... and I have to say that I am decidedly unimpressed.  I think that even for those who don't use Photoshop in their everyday life (or have never used a photo editing program) it is rather complicated yet bland.  How many people want to change a photo into a florescent hued version of the original (one of their special "effects" called Hue)?!  I much prefer tools that enhance the original (in all the right ways of course)!

...So where does this leave us with all our waning excitement... Flickr of course!  I admittedly never use Flickr's photo editing tools because I have the full version of Photoshop (the real thing = awesome) and don't need to... but just for the sake of comparison, I edited a photo on flickr (account required) and in the free version of Photoshop released today (account required)... and here are the results: 

Please note that each of the processes used here could either be toned up or down... these are just the examples I chose for comparison.

Comments

[Zinzi]

oooh i see what you mean! it doesn't seem like photoshop express gives you much control, which is what is great about real photoshop.

didn't know that you couldn't do that on flickr, though. thanks. :)

[susan]

I completely agree with you. Not for me. I've been using picknik. I love it. I'm addicted to it. Photoshop express, I don't think so. Too bad.

[Design for Mankind]

Ohhhh, thanks for testing this out! Now I can rest easy knowing I didn't buy the cow when I could get the milk for free.

Wait, is that how that saying goes?

[Nice-Etc]

man. what is up with photoshop..it's like they really really only ever want you to buy the real deal and pay lots of mula haha. I have an older version that I love, but my family doesn't have access to it..I recently showed my mom how to use picnik and it does what she needs it to do for now. i was really impressed with it as well.

[Ez]

Yea... I was really shocked by the poor quality of Photoshop Express... I expected much more from the creators of something a pristine as "Photoshop!"I've been using Photoshop 7 for ages now and really like it. I can't even believe the capabilities available... it seems that I figure out something new every week!For heavy-duty photo editing and graphic stuff you can't get by without the full version of Photoshop... but for those who just have a handful of photos a week to edit... I think Picnik is the way to go!

xoxEz

[joanna]

hi Ez, thanks for the direction!

do you know there is photo editing functions on photobucket also now? i host my photos (for blog, etc) on photobucket and now i can add round corners, etc. still figuring how to re-colour certain parts of the photos, but they are quite simple and handy tools.

[JLC Studio]

Wow! The differences are amazing...I like the original photo better in both cases by the way! Thanks for sharing that....

[Benita]

For my humble needs picnic works fine. I love it when it says "you're in picnic mode" :)

[M&Co]

Ohh thank you! Never tought of using Flickr for that, but the result is really nice! Thanks for sharing your secrets ;-)!! Photoshop Express = What a disapointment! :-(

[M&Co]

Just a tip :-) For those of us unable to buy the full pacage of Photoshop; Gimp (gimp.org) is a really good alternative! I've been using Photoshop earlier and am now using Gimp, and quite weird but I actually prefer Gimp, and the even better thing is that its free :-)

[susy]

yup. totally agree....in photoshop my guilty pleasure is 'brightness/contrast.' i looove to get that blown-out whitespace look...but it gets icky if you make it too strong, and it starts to look like the 'great white light' is near....

[paola]

The best free photo editing tool by far is Picasa from Google www.picasa.com I love it to bits, it's very intuitive to use, and I now do very little editing in Photoshop..