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Photo-sharing and -storage sites Picasa Web (click for Picasa's PC download) and Photobucket announced new mobile interfaces this week. While m.photobucket.com and picasaweb.google.com/mobile (or via Google's new mobile interface: mobile.google.com) grant access to online albums from any mobile browser, the interface on iPhone's full Safari browser is still a special case. iPhone's large, sharp screen is ideal for viewing slide shows, but bars users from directly uploading iPhone photos to Web sites.

While this essentially leaves Picasa handcuffed as a mobile photo viewer, Photobucket's site provides an account-linked e-mail address for users to send photos that are then pushed to their Photobucket accounts. It's a decent roundabout uploading technique that's legal under warranty, until Apple enables direct photo and video uploading.

Both Picasa and Photobucket for iPhone display personal albums and search fields for seeking out public photos from each sites' larger community. Photobucket throws in a few suggested search items on the log-in page, like all photos tagged "glitter," but has a clumsier linear display that won't produce iPhone slide shows and fails to resize when flipped horizontally. Picasa's more polished interface offers a much cleaner user experience that also makes better use of the iPhone's dimensions, passes the "iPhone flip" test, and also provides a quick link to Google's other mobile services, like Google Reader, the calendar, and Gmail.

If Google's Picasa were to adopt a photo-upload workaround, it would easily be superior to Photobucket, whose full version already outstrips Picasa Web in features that include video uploads and wide distribution options. However, Picasa users who don't mind uploading iPhone images via their PC will enjoy the flexible viewing that mimics iPhone's native photo-viewing.

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Photobucket, the massive image-sharing site that was acquired by News Corp. last year, announced Tuesday the debut of its mobile Web site.

On the new site, now live at m.photobucket.com, members of the photo-sharing site can browse their own photos as well as public images, upload photos to the site from their mobile devices, and access a limited home page. In the future, the company has said, Photobucket Mobile will expand to allow video functionality as well as options to embed photos in social-networking profiles.

A statement from Photobucket cited that demand for mobile photo-sharing access is high. According to an internal survey by Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. division that runs Photobucket, 80 percent of users who responded to the survey own camera phones, 36 percent use the camera every day, and 52 percent access the mobile Web on their handsets.

Not to mention the fact that some other popular image-sharing sites, like the Yahoo-owned Flickr, already run mobile Web sites, as do social-networking sites like Facebook that have photo-sharing features; Photobucket needed to catch up with the competition.

And if cell phones are too small for your taste, Photobucket has a deal with TiVo so that you can access your online albums on your nice big HDTV.

Apparently, fast-forwarding through commercials just isn't enough. TiVo announced on Monday that users of select photo-sharing services are now able to access their image collections through its set-top boxes.

The digital video recorder manufacturer has partnered with two photo-sharing services--the Google-owned Picasa Web Albums and Fox Interactive Media-owned Photobucket--in order to enable users to surf through their photo albums as well as their friends' and family members', provided that their TiVo boxes are broadband-connected.

A release from the company emphasized the fact that photos are viewable in the highest resolution possible, which on the TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD devices means full high definition.

In addition, the TiVo interface makes it possible for users to search the overall database of public Picasa or Photobucket images by keyword.

The Photobucket search interface on TiVo

(Credit: Photobucket/TiVo)

It's yet another step in TiVo's quest to make its equipment more versatile than the standard DVR--and to make it an appealing choice in a market that remains tepid.

"At TiVo, we're focused on the entire entertainment experience, from movies to music, and in this case--memories," Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing, said in the company's statement. "By working with these well-respected and popular photo-sharing partners, TiVo enables families to share their pictures in new, fun ways."

This fall, TiVo announced a deal with RealNetworks' Rhapsody to bring the subscription-based music service to its devices.

Photoshop Express offers users a selection of different options from which to select as an easier alternative to adjustment sliders.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

MONTEREY, Calif.--Adobe Systems has committed to shipping a beta version of its online image-editing tool, Photoshop Express, this year, and said it will be complete in 2008.

"By late this year, we anticipate having a beta version," said John Loiacono, senior vice president for Adobe Creative Solutions, speaking at the 6sight digital imaging conference here. And next year, the online service will be "available to anyone," he said.

Loiacono showed Photoshop Express running on an Adobe server connected over the Internet, he said. But when the average person experiences the software, it likely will be through partners such as Shutterfly or Photobucket, he said.

Unsurprisingly, Loiacono left unmentioned Flickr, which said in October it will use Picnik's online photo-editing tools.

Photoshop Express is a profoundly important project, and Adobe's schedule indicates that its repercussions are near-term and not academic.

For Adobe, the project is the spearhead of a transformation from a seller of boxed software to a provider of services in an increasingly rich Internet experience. And for the industry overall, it signals that Internet technology is maturing enough that companies are willing risk extending the brand of respected PC software to the network.

Photoshop Express, as its name suggests, isn't a full-fledged version of Photoshop proper or even of its hobbyist-oriented sibling, Photoshop Elements. The intent is to reach a much larger audience than the company currently reaches with its higher-end boxed software products.

This sports car used to be red.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

A look at Photoshop Express
Loiacono demonstrated several features of Photoshop Express, hampered only fleetingly by a couple Flash error messages. He selected photos to edit from a group, removed red-eye, cropped, adjusted color tones, used a healing brush to erase a skin blemish, and replaced the color of a red sports car with various other hues.

The demonstration showed the relatively limited set of features available in Photoshop Express. There were three top-level menu options: quick fix, tuning, and fun.

"Fun" options include replace color, which Loiacono showed to change a red sports car into blue, purple and green. Other options are huge, black-and-white, distort, sketch, and tint.

"Quick fix" options were crop and rotate, blemish removal, red-eye removal, auto correct, and sharpen. Tuning options were white balance, exposure, highlight, fill light, saturation, and soft focus.

Photoshop Express offers a blemish-fixing tool similar to full-fledged Photoshop's healing brush.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

If you want another look, my comrade Martin LaMonica--who had the online Photoshop scoop in February--last month posted a video of an earlier Photoshop Express demonstration.

Computational photography
Loiacono also offered a glimpse into what Adobe and others call computational photography--the achieving through the combination of photography and computers what can't be achieved with either alone.

With digital cameras, some computation already happens in cameras themselves, but Loiacono predicted more.

For example, today people can combine two photos that are exposed differently--one for a subject in the foreground illuminated by a flash and another with natural light in the background. Merging those two photos could happen earlier in the process so people don't have to futz with processing the photos afterward, he said.

"What we're moving to is an environment when your camera will be able to take two shots, process them in the camera, and give you the desirable output," Loiacono said.

He also demonstrated a video variation of stitching still images together into a single panorama. A video taken panning across a view of an African waterfall was converted into a wide panoramic pan of the same waterfall, with the water flowing across the full scene even though it was taken from different frames of the video.

He also showed a view of Adobe's light-field camera work, which processes multiple images taken simultaneously so the computer can effectively construct a three-dimensional model of the scene.