Photoshop Express - Free Image Editor & Host

Photoshop Express is a free, web based image editor and photo hosting service available from Adobe.  Yes, this is the same Adobe that makes the most popular image editing software with a similar name; Photoshop CS3 (US $650).  Don't confuse the two.  Photoshop (the CS3 version) is a full featured image editor tailored toward professional photographers, serious amateur photographers, or graphics and web designers.  Photoshop Express is a web based tool that contains a small, easy to use subset of high quality image editing tools for the average user.  Photoshop Express also offers 2 gigabytes of free image hosting space - All for free!

Here is a quick overview of Photoshop Express.

To use Photoshop Express, simply go to www.photoshop.com/express and signup for a free account.  Once you have your account, you will be able to upload your files and access a nice array of image editing tools. 

• Crop & Rotate--Turn it, straighten it, crop out the background.
• Auto Correct--Automatic, one-click, optimal lighting and contrast adjustment.
• Exposure--Change the brightness of the photo.
• Red-Eye Removal--Removes red eyes caused by some camera flashes.
• Touchup--Remove scratches and other imperfections.
• Saturation--Ramp up the colors to blinding brightness, dampen them down to black and white, or anywhere in between.
• White Balance--Ever notice how people look different inside an office with the ugly fluorescent tubes, as opposed to outside on a bright sunny day? Adjust the white balance and you change the type of lighting in the photo.
• Highlight--The brightest parts of a photo are the highlights. This control lets you brighten or darken just the brightest part of the photo, without affecting the darker parts (we call those the shadows).
• Fill Light--If you take a shot facing into the sun, your subject can end up too dark due to the camera's automatic exposure adjustment. Fill Light brightens the dark area without overbrightening the background.
• Sharpen--It's like putting in your contacts. Suddenly everything comes more into focus.
• Soft Focus--It's like taking your contacts out. Soft Focus creates a subtle blur for artistic effect.
• Hue--This one changes all the colors in a photo at once.
• Black & White--Control how the colors are converted when you change a photo to black and white.
• Tint--Imagine instead of black and white, you want red and white, or pale brown and white for that old Western look.
• Sketch--Makes any photo look like you drew it yourself.
• Distort--Stretch, twist, bulge specific areas of your photos.

The beauty of these tools is their simplicity to use, and their professional results.  To give you an idea of how simple Photoshop Express is to use, here is a quick overview of how to edit a photograph.

Step one, upload your files.  The File Upload function is flexible and easy to use.  Simply find the files on your computer and click upload.  Photoshop Express has a nice status screen showing you the progress of the upload process.

When you edit your image with one of the tools, Photoshop Express gives you several thumbnail views of the possibilities.  In the example below, you can see the 7 options available when using the Exposure tool.  (Click the image to see a larger version)

This same "several thumbnail change" view will appear for just about every image editing tool you select.  This is a very cool feature!

As you edit your images you will always have three option available to you;

Reset to Original: Discard any changes and revert to the original image.
Cancel: Cancel the current changes and revert to the last change made.
Save: Save your changes.

Pretty simple, eh?

In addition to quality, easy-to-use image editing functions. Photoshop Express can be used to;

• Host your images on a public Web Server.  Your files can be made available to the public via a personal URL.  For example: MyName.photoshop.com
• Access and edit images stored on other publicly hosted servers such as Facebook, PhotoBucket or Picassa.

Overall, I'm impressed!  Photoshop Express provides an easy to use, high quality, simple, image editing environment.  That, and 2gb of free hosted space to share your images makes Photoshop Express worth a try.  For the price (free!) you can't beat it.