Company aims to boost its name recognition among online audience By Amanda Fehd The Associated Press updated 10:47 a.m. CT, Thurs., March. 27, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO - The maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop on Thursday launched a basic version available for free online.
San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. says it hopes to boost its name recognition among a new generation of consumers who edit, store and share photos online.
While Photoshop is designed for trained professionals, Adobe says Photoshop Express, which it launched in a "beta" test version, is easier to learn. User comments will be taken into account for future upgrades.
Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. And, once they register, users can get to their accounts from different computers.
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The description as "the popular photo-editing software Photoshop" shows a deep failure of comprehension of what Photoshop is, by the writer.
Photoshop is a full capability image creation and editing program that goes far beyond "photo editing."
Photoshop Elements is specifically designed to incorporate all the features needed for photo editing, omitting more than it keeps from the full Photoshop.
The new release is a web-based program, to be called Photoshop Express, and would appear to be similar to what comes free with a cheap camera, although evaluation will have to wait until it's been examined. Being web-based, it will require you to hook up and log in to use it.
The expectation now is that it will include lots of "automatic" corrections for common camera/picture weaknesses, but sophisticated user-controlled tweaking shouldn't be expected.
If you have a good camera (and use it intelligently1), automated minor tweaking should be sufficient for most of your shots. If you have an obsolete-cheap-inferior camera like mine, you probably will want Photoshop Elements or something nearly at least that good.
The current release is indicated as a "beta release," so near-term changes in features should be expected.
1 Members to whom this caveat applies will recognize themselves(?)