"Photoshop Express" RIA sneak-peeked today

Flash

Today the crowd at Photoshop World got a quick preview of Photoshop Express, a new application currently in development at Adobe.  First hinted at by Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen some six months ago, Photoshop Express isn’t meant to duplicate/replace Photoshop CS3 or Photoshop Elements. Rather, it’s a new member of the Photoshop family that’s meant to make Adobe imaging technology immediately accessible to large numbers of people.

Earlier this year, Adobe introduced Premiere Express, a free, Flash-based online video editor for creating mash-ups and remixes. Anyone using Photobucket, MTV.com and YouTube’s TestTube site can take Premiere Express for a spin.  Photoshop Express, though not yet publicly available, aims to offer a similarly easy, approachable experience for image editing.

I can’t share a ton of additional detail at the moment, but here’s a screenshot of the app in action. Adobe Sr. VP John Loiacono showed that it was possible to adjust an image just by rolling over the different versions shown at the top, previewing the results & then clicking the desired degree of modification.   I’ll post more info as it becomes available.

[Update: You can see the quick onstage demo of Photoshop Express in Terry White’s latest Creative Suite Podcast (direct link to video).  The demo starts around 16:10 mark.]

0 thoughts on “"Photoshop Express" RIA sneak-peeked today”

  1. FINALLY!!
    we have been waiting so long.
    for web images – this will be perfect and convenient.
    It just is not necessary to use the photoshop software for low res graphics

  3. I’m not sure what it is… is it a Flash-based image editor with the word Photoshop in it’s name? Why doesn’t it look like photoshop then?

  4. The “undo nothing” and “redo nothing” buttons look interesting.
    [It’s the first ERIA–Existential Rich Internet App. 😉 I’m trying to gather some more communicative screenshots. –J.]

  5. So I see above that the Photoshop Express isn’t available yet for us to mess with_
    But what about Premiere Express ?
    Can we get our hands on that yet ?
    I’ve searched around and have found that the above companies are really the only ones publicly with access_
    Are both still in BETA form I guess ?
    [i know PS Express is – obviously]
    [Try the YouTube link I mentioned. It requires a (free) login, and I haven’t had time to poke around much, but you should find what you’re looking for. Please let me know if not. –J.]

  6. looks like a combination of Lightroom and iPhoto. is this an online or desktop app? I’ve requested in the past Adobe create a light viewer and something to do very basic edits. Hope this is that. i.e. Like Irfanview but Adobeized.
    [It’s purely online (hosted). –J.]

  7. No offense, I love Adobe and the development products they put out, but seriously? Y’all need to try harder. 🙂 I expected far more from the first screenshot of “Photoshop Express”. I mean, we’ve already got Picnik.com, which is the same thing (a basic photo editor made with Flex). And it’s a bazillion times sweeter looking.
    The bar is being raised for Flex apps. If Adobe decided to put out a word processor that couldn’t come close to competing with Buzzword, us Flex developers would laugh. It looks like Photoshop Express is a long way off from being as good as Picnik (and Picnik has a helluva long way to go to being a really good photo editing tool). I think an acquisition is in order. At the moment it just looks like Adobe doesn’t have the cash to put behind these projects. (No disrespect to any of the Flex devs working on Photoshop Express). Seriously, are real resources being devoted to these projects? The only one that looks like it has a solid team behind it is Adobe Media Player.

  8. I want Photohsop Expresso, that keeps me while when I’m working on thousands of photos! 😀
    Looks good. I would find it handy when I’m away from the Mac Pro and not carrying my MacBook Pro. Let it tie into my GMail account so I can shoot quick photos to editors, photographers and family and I’d use it for sure.

  9. Great step in the right direction. I hope they can still work out the UI details of how the top side (previews of canned settings) relates to the settings panel on the left. This has some potential for confusion. Also the “Undo nothing” and “Redo nothing” buttons are a little bit on the whacky side. I am sure all of this gets refined before launch and the good news is since it’s hosted there are no longer going to be eternal 12 or 18 months update cycles. Adobe can now fix and add things whenever needed. You guys have really come around.

  13. That little appswitching semitransparent cube in the lower right looks rather intriguing. Will it rotate? Gives a total new meaning to our beloved CS3 icons…

  14. I used to be an ardent fan of Photoshop Elements. I have version 3. 4 wasn’t quite compelling enough. Now that CS3 is out, are we going to see an update or is this it? I cannot imagine uploading my photos to the server every time I want to edit them. Yuk. If it’s limited to low res, then definitely not.

  15. I used to be an ardent fan of Photoshop Elements. I have version 3. 4 wasn’t quite compelling enough. Now that CS3 is out, are we going to see a Mac update or is this it? I cannot imagine uploading my photos to the server every time I want to edit them. Yuk. If it’s limited to low res, then definitely not.

  17. @JP Cooper
    Premiere Express isn’t available as an end user product from Adobe – we only sell it to partners who implement it on their site(s).
    Mike

  18. This looks great! I hope there is some XMP / RDF management included in it sometime. That would really help when moving pictures around from service to service.
    Cheers! Dan Smith

  22. @Mike Potter
    So is this going to be the same deal for Photoshop Express then ?
    And – I need to go register as a partner and have a big time site with billions of people showing up every hour – spend a shit load of cash with Adobe – and if my business is in the ballpark of catering to the technology – then I might get a hold of a copy to add to my site ?
    So why in the hell are you all throwing this stuff out to the general consumer – if we can’t even get ahold of it ?
    Seems likea waste to me_
    being able to install this onto my server – either the Photo or Video Editors or both – would be great for so when I’m traveling I can take photos or footage and then drop them on my server and mess with them right then if I choose_
    I am not personally impressed with all of these public based sharing sites_ I’m not 12 and I don’t feel the urge to join a social network so I can feel special_
    This blows_ Thanks Adobe_

  23. It is Not a flash Based… it’s Flex 2.0!
    [Well, it’s a SWF running in the Flash Player, so development environment aside, the app is indeed “Flash-based.” –J.]

  25. John and Mike,
    Before you read Jp Cooper’s comments above and get the wrong idea, I’d like to help prevent an international incident.
    You see, I used to work at the UN and upon careful examination of his statements, have come to realize that Jp is not typing English but is instead, typing in a language only known to those is a small European country called Né Yerk (pronounced knee-jerk)
    What he actually is trying to say to you is:
    “Wow! Even though no comments from Adobe ever suggested that this was going to be a hosted application available for licensing at the retail level, I somehow got that idea stuck in my head. Even though Adobe’s CEO talked about other hosted services that I can’t buy or acquire for free and install on my own personal server for my own private use by companies like Google and how their profit model (advertising) could probably work for Adobe, I completely didn’t pick up on what that meant. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately so you’ll have to excuse me for that.
    After realizing what this really is, I don’t think it is something I’ll personally have use for although I can clearly see where it may benefit tens of millions of other people. Personally, I’m just not into that whole online social networking thing. I know it’s popular but so were “Member’s Only” jackets in the 80’s and I never cared much for those either.
    I realize that you are making a big deal out of this to the public because through your partnerships with other large companies, it means that the world will have access to state of the art technology that they’d otherwise have to buy and install on each computer they used for free while someone else foots the bill entirely. That’s incredibly cool and I’m really excited for all the people who this is targeted for.
    That said, have you guys ever considered making something like what I thought this was going to be? You know, something that I could buy and install on a server for remote access? I realize that getting the price right and making it so that I couldn’t just pay a one time fee and then open it to the entire world to use once installed on my server might be tricky but maybe it could be made so that only a single person could use it at one time just to be safe?
    I know that I’m very much in the minority and that there probably aren’t too many photo and video enthusiasts that would be happy with the very limited feature set that these online applications are going to offer in comparison to the full programs I’m used to using but sometimes it would be nice to have when I’m working on another computer somewhere. Surely there must be a market for heavy server side software that private individuals would install and maintain themselves?
    I know that you are probably going to say I should just register at one of these free sites and use the service for free through them and not worry about all the complicated setups or if my hosting service will allow me to run something this complex potentially processor intensive on their shared server. You’ll probably tell me that all I have to do is register for free to get access to the software and that I don’t have to leave my stuff up there publicly for all the world to see after I’ve processed it but I like paying money or being pto do things the hard way.
    To conclude, I feel so silly for misunderstanding something as clear as the statements that have come out of Adobe about all of this. I’m also a little disappointed and sincerely hope you will take my suggestions into serious consideration.”
    … And that is roughly, what he was saying. I really hope he doesn’t mind me coming in here and clearing things up for you guys but I’d hate for you and the rest of the world reading this blog to think he’s some kind of of a rude idiot because you didn’t understand what he was really trying to say.
    Now that’s all clear, I kind of second his sentiment in that I’ll probably never use this myself but I have friends and relatives that’ll love this and I think it is great that in the brave new online world, companies like Adobe are finding ways of creating products for the public that are simple to use and for all practical intents and purposes, free to the end use in just about every sense of the word.

  27. Looking forward to learning more about the program. Will it be a standalone program or online? I’m sure that while using the program, the screenshot you provided will make sense but right now it’s incredibly confusing.
    What do the “Undo nothing” and “Redo nothing” buttons do? What does the cube of logos do in the lower right? What do the bubbly buttons do in the lower left? These are just some of the many questions the screenshot raises.

  29. The concern I have is based on possibility (or inevitability) that Adobe is competing with their own customers. Often, this also means “unfairly” competing when the tools created for inside-Adobe projects is not available to the outside consumers. I’m not saying this is definitely the case… but when a company begins to venture in this direction it’s very risky that they alienate their customers.
    [I suppose it’s inevitable that when a company makes both development tools & end-user tools, some degree of overlap will occur. And you’re right that it’s possible (though not, in my experience, planned) that internal teams would get earlier access to dev tools than outside parties would. (Of course, they’d then suffer through commensurately more bugs.) The flipside I’d note is that outside companies are often much more nimble than a big company that has to localize its products into 20 languages, etc. –J.]

  31. Hey John… yeah, there’s a good point there that “early access” also means more work. But… what you may not be getting from my drift is when the company (Adobe in this case) NEVER releases the new features to the public–in fact, they keep it to themselves as a competitive advantage over their customers. The most glowing case is with screen sharing in Breeze/Connect. That’s an easy one for me to harp on, but it’s a fact and one that’s often getting repeated (albeit not as blatantly). That’s the concern I have.

  32. I use FotoFlexer http://fotoflexer.com/ because it offers some very sophisticated AI technology behind the scenes. I wonder/doubt if Adobe will be able to keep pace with this team, which seems to be a bunch of Berkeley PhDs.

  33. good product for basic photo editing.. don’t expect photoshop cs or full quality.. looks more like a “ms photo editor” with an adobe sticker on it..

  34. I used to be an ardent fan of Photoshop Elements. I have version 3. 4 wasn’t quite compelling enough. Now that CS3 is out, are we going to see a Mac update or is this it? I cannot imagine uploading my photos to the server every time I want to edit them. Yuk. If it’s limited to low res, then definitely not

  35. I cannot imagine uploading my photos to the server every time I want to edit them. Yuk. If it’s limited to low res, then definitely not

  37. What do the “Undo nothing” and “Redo nothing” buttons do? What does the cube of logos do in the lower right? What do the bubbly buttons do in the lower left? These are just some of the many questions the screenshot raises

  38. Looking forward to learning more about the program. Will it be a standalone program or online? I’m sure that while using the program, the screenshot you provided will make sense but right now it’s incredibly confusing.