Picture This!

Just as I reviewed another online photo editor last October, Picnik, Adobe was announcing one of their own. Called Adobe Photoshop Express and released as Beta software early this year. Currently it is free to try in it's current state. I expect, like Picnik, they will have a more robust version for a subscription fee once Photoshop Express is out of the beta stage.

Photoshop Express, unlike the PC version of Photoshop, is mainly a photo editor with very little in the way of graphic ability. However, it does what it does very, very well. With a free account, you get 2 GB of storage to upload your photos to work on. You have a main library where all your photos reside and you can create albums to organize them in. You can email, run a slideshow and edit photos from an album. This is where Photoshop Express has it over Picnik which has online storage but no way to organize them.

Clicking on a photo will reveal a menu where you can do a few things besides editing and is a nice touch so you don't have to open a photo to do some things with it. Once you decide to edit a photo, the editor has a very clean and easy to work with interface (see below). Down the left side of the browser window you have a list of tools you can use broken up into three submenus: Basics, Tuning and Effects.

Basics - Crop and/or Rotate, Auto Correct, Exposure, Red-Eye Removal, Touchup and Saturation. As in Picnik, I like to start with the Auto Correct to see what it comes up with. Often it does everything I need except it does not add any sharpening.

Tuning - White Balance, Highlight, Fill Light, Sharpen and Soft Focus. This is where you can tweak your photo for color, lighting and sharpness.

Effects - Pop Color, Hue, Black & White, Tint, Sketch and Distort. Here is where you can have some real fun with your photos and the only place you can play with graphic interpretations of them in Photoshop Express.

Adobe Photoshop Express Online Photo Editor

When selecting a tool which will alter your photo, Photoshop Express will show you versions of your photo in a row above it. Below the row of photos is a bar you can slide to vary the change between the versions along with your original starting photo. I found these to be a great help in making my decisions when using each tool.

Okay, enough chatter, lets see how I used Photoshop Express on one of my photos of Cinderella's Castle tower. Below is the photo in question. I almost rejected this photo outright but it was the only one I took of this scene and I liked the late afternoon light and composition. The notes on the photo represent what I wanted to fix in this image.

Editing notes of Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/400s, f/10, 200 ISO, 0 EV, 55mm Focal Length

Again, I tried the Auto Correct but wasn't really happy with any of the versions Photoshop Express came up with. I quickly turned to the Exposure tool (this is the tool you see in the first image above) and I really liked the version second to the right of the original. This nicely brought up the underexposed sky and some of the shadows of the tower. Next, I used the Retouch tool to get rid of the pesky sensor dust. This tool is very easy to work with. Just select the size of the "brush" (a circle) and click on the dust. Bingo, all gone! The last Basics tool I used was to Saturate the color a little bit by selecting the first Photoshop Express version shown to the right of the original. Again, I found these versions great to use.

Moving on to the Tuning menu. I started with the White Balance tool. Even though you'll be working with JPEG files and not RAW files, this tool surprised me in how it worked. I didn't think I would use any of the versions but found I liked the Sunset setting and selected it. Fill Light is something I liked about the free Picasa Photo Editor and the Photoshop Express version did not disappoint in opening up the shadows in the towers without adding more light to the background sky. Lastly, went to the Sharpen tool which has a neat little 100% square you can move around the image. The views above are of the square with increased sharpening going from left to right. You can select one of them which sharpens the entire image to that sharpening amount or use the slider to increase sharpening as you move it to the right. I found the first version to the right was perfect for my tastes.

Here's the final result of all my selected adjustments.

Cinderella's Castle towers in the Magic Kingdom after using Photoshop Express.

I am quite happy with how it came out. I couldn't resist playing in the Effects area. I'll leave it up to you to discover how these work. Here's a link to a purple and green hued version of the above photo: Joker Towers.

Now, how did I remember all those things I did? Simple. Photoshop Express remembers all your settings so you can go back, tweak them again or change them around and save the new version under a different name.

In conclusion, I enjoyed using Photoshop Express for both it's online library and editor. I hope in the future Adobe will add graphics for text and more effects. Photoshop Express can retrieve and save to popular photo sites Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa Photo Albums as well as the Facebook community.