In this edition of the Living In The Clouds Series, I am going to talk about the online photo editor by Adobe, Photoshop.com. In fact, my favorite web app for photo editing is still Picnik (one day, I will write about them here in this space) but I also use photoshop.com for some of its advantages. After killing its free low end Photoshop Album Starter Edition, Adobe wanted to push their free users towards SaaS and, possibly, try to convince them to pay for cloud based storage of their photographs. Even though I hate the clunkier flash based web apps, I liked this move by Adobe as it offered an option to edit their photographs without any need for clunkier desktop apps.
As it is customary in this series, I will add a video of the app below
Recently, photoshop.com also released an iPhone App and the following video will give an overview of this app
As I usually do in this series, I will list out the pros and cons from my point of view.
Pros:
- You get to use some of the powerful features that were available in the low end Adobe photoshop products including autocorrect, redeye, etc.. This also has some of the advanced features like distortion, sketch effects, etc..
- 2 GB free storage is good for most of the starters. There are plans available for those users who need more storage (up to 500 GB)
- The biggest attraction for me is the newly released iPhone application. It brings the power of photoshop to iPhone and you can adjust the values by just sliding the fingers on the iPhone screen. This feature is very handy and convenient.
- They allow video uploads too. Very handy to push small clips.
- They offer a personalized photoshop.com URL to share your photos. Helps for branding purposes.
Cons:
- It is a flash based app. Some of us have an hatred to the clunky flash based user interface. Such people may not like this app.
- The cost of storage is ok but I would expect Adobe to offer better pricing there.
- You cannot create a new image on Photoshop.com unlike the desktop version. That is a put off for some.
