Webware

Adobe Systems has delayed by a few weeks the release of some upgrades to its Photoshop.com online service and to its high-end Photoshop CS4 software.

The upcoming Photoshop site upgrades include features to import address book entries from Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail to improve photo sharing; an uploading tool to synchronize software on a person's PC with the version stored online; and new pricing options. They had been due Tuesday but now will go live "later this month," Adobe said in a statement Monday night.

Also slipping a few weeks is the Photoshop CS4 Configurator, a tool to let people create customized control panels for the image-editing software. It had been due in October, but now it and another new CS4 option, the Pixel Bender filter gallery, won't debut until later in November, John Nack, senior product manager for Photoshop, said in a blog post. Pixel Bender is a technology enabling high-performance special effects that Adobe hopes will be easier to use than earlier plug-in filter technology.

"We decided to give both tools a little extra bake time, so look for them to appear on Adobe Labs within the next two weeks," Nack said. "Also stay tuned for a Camera Raw update for CS4 that'll include a number of nice little surprises."

Adobe plans new options next week to give its Photoshop.com a bigger social destination and to help the service stay in sync with people's computers.

Photoshop.com can be used to store, edit, and share photos, but today those activities happen largely in isolation. That will change November 11 as the company releases an AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) application called AIR Uploader that will let people synchronize photos stored on their own computers and on the online photography site, Adobe said.

Another change will let site members import address books from Google's Gmail, Microsoft's Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail so that photos can be sent to family members or other contacts more easily. And another social dimension will come with the ability to sign up to receive updates whenever contacts add new photos.

Photoshop.com is closely tied to Adobe's consumer-oriented photo and video software, Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, and the online site could mean extra revenue for Adobe if it takes off.

People who've bought the latest version 7 of those packages now can get new Photoshop.com storage options: basic membership costs $19.99 per year for 20 GB of storage, 40GB costs $39.99, and 100GB costs $99.99.

The higher-end Plus membership, which adds album templates and tutorials, costs $49.99 annually for 20GB, $69.99 for 40GB, and $129.99 for 100GB. And for people who don't have the Elements software, online-only customers next week will be able to buy storage at $19.99 per year for 20 GB, $39.99 for 40GB, and $99.99 for 100GB.

Updated 5:12 p.m. PST to note some of the new storage options are available now.

Photoshop Elements 7 prominently promotes Adobe's Photoshop.com online service.

Adobe Systems has begun shipping its enthusiast-oriented Photoshop Elements 7 image-editing software and Premiere Elements 7 video-editing software--and is offering a promotion to try to lure users to its online Photoshop.com site as well.

The Elements software costs $99.99 each or $149.99 as a bundle. New with this version, Adobe also is offering a $179.99 price that includes a one-year Photoshop.com Plus membership. Ordinarily, a Photoshop.com Plus subscription costs $49.99 a year, so you're basically getting a $20 price break, at least until the time comes to renew for another year.

Photoshop.com offers tutorials, online albums for backing up and sharing your shots, and access to the Photoshop Express online editing tool. The free basic version comes with 2GB of storage, and the Plus level comes with 20GB of storage.

Pricing isn't the only promotion. CNET reviewer Lori Grunin found it annoying how prominently Elements touts the online option in the software itself.

Adobe Systems on Monday let loose its plan to reinvent its image-editing software: the convergence of desktop, Webware, and mobile photo applications.

In late September, Adobe will update both Adobe's Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements with version 7, rebrand Photoshop Express as Photoshop.com, and debut a mobile Photoshop (of sorts) for Windows Mobile.

Syncing with the new Photoshop.com

Whereas Photoshop Express (review) began life as an experimental, Web-based offshoot of the Photoshop brand, Adobe's new strategy to automatically sync photos from desktop to Web to phone and back again now gives Photoshop Express a starring role on the Photoshop playbill, albeit using a different alias. Don't let that fool you--although the product will now be Photoshop.com, it will retain its editing features and the ability to post photos to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa. The bigger difference is that the new Photoshop.com will sync with the two Photoshop Elements applications and the new mobile software.

A sneak peek at Adobe Premiere Elements 7.

(Credit: Adobe)

To sweeten the deal for existing users, and perhaps to lure new ones, Adobe is bumping up the free, basic membership plan from 2GB to 5GB of storage. However, Adobe is no doubt hoping that users will get hooked on online storage and go with the Plus membership, which will dish out templates and tips in addition to serving up 20GB in locker space for photos and videos. The 'Plus' plan is sold on its own for $50 per year or bundled with the desktop software for $140.

New Photoshop Elements

Phase two of Adobe's photo-syncing project is to update the desktop-bound Elements applications to make them compatible with the new Photoshop.com. They'll get a few additional features and enhancements along the way. For instance, Photoshop Elements 7--which is expected to sell for about $100 or $80 if you're upgrading--will automatically back up photos online, deliver new templates, and will contain new image-enhancement tools. CNET Senior Editor Lori Grunin has an in-depth preview and her own take on Adobe's efforts to stay relevant.

Premiere Elements 7 will see the bonus features in Elements 7 and raise them with new movie-making tools, support for AVCHD, and automatic video upload to YouTube. Grunin weighs in on that update, too.

You'll be able to upload, share, and view photos, but not title or caption them from Adobe's beta mobile app.

(Credit: Adobe)

Photoshop on the phone

Adobe's mobile presence has so far been restricted to utilities--a mobile PDF-reader and Flash Lite for playing Flash videos on the mobile stage. To that end, Photoshop.com Mobile beta is Adobe's first attempt at creating a mobile version of one of its consumer offerings, although the app will primarily remain a vehicle for simple uploading and downloading to and from the revamped Photoshop.com.

Based on the Flash Lite Player, Photoshop.com Mobile beta will let you upload all the photos on your mobile phone to Photoshop.com, which will then automatically sync to either Element 7 app, if you have one. The preview build we saw is divided into three rudimentary actions. The first is to upload select phone photos to Photoshop.com for sharing with friends or for using as a backup. The second has you viewing thumbnails of all the photos in your online gallery, and the third lets you peruse any albums you've created on Photoshop.com and Elements 7. There will be no photo-tagging, titling, or captioning in the initial release, and we admit that's a letdown, especially when competing photo apps can already do this on multiple mobile operating systems.

That's a competition to which Adobe can't help but be attentive. Traditionally a publisher of desktop software, Adobe has been slow to adapt for the two fastest-growing software platforms--mobile and the Web. While we expect a bare bones Photoshop.com Mobile beta, the app's ability to connect with the Photoshop.com hub gives Adobe more relevance for existing users. We're skeptical that folks using Picasa, Photobucket, and Flickr will abandon them for Photoshop.com, but the ability to quickly post from the phone to those sites, from the Web to the desktop, and from the phone to the desktop via Adobe's servers, may keep users of the Elements desktop apps from bailing in favor of a competitor.

Like Adobe's other releases, Photoshop.com Mobile beta will be available in late September, first for Samsung Blackjack I and II, Moto Q 9h and 9m, and Palm Treo 700 w/wx and 750, with support for other Windows Mobile phones expected to follow.

Adobe just updated its Photoshop Express service with a handful of relatively unexciting but useful new features. The most important one is the inclusion of printing through Shutterfly, making it easier to take edited photos and get them printed either for yourself or to send as gifts. Previously you'd have to pull down the photos off of Adobe's servers or send them to a partner server to have them printed elsewhere. Now you can just get them ported out with a single click.

There's also a new Adobe AIR uploader that lets you send photos from your desktop to Photoshop Express' cloud storage servers for editing with a simple drag and drop. Between the Web and desktop uploader, I actually found the Web version just a tad slower, although both are exceptionally easy to use. Either way you're still stuck with Adobe's 2GB account cap. The good news is that you can now shrink exceptionally large photos with the new resizing tool that gives you some quick presets for popular formats--mainly blogs and social-networking profile photos.

Another update of interest is the inclusion of music for use in slideshows. A similar offering showed up in Adobe's Flex-based editing tool for videos (coverage) and lets you put your creation to rights managed tracks. I couldn't manage to get any of the songs to show up, but the drop down menu can be found alongside the other settings when you're in the slideshow editing environment.

Photoshop Express' latest major update included integration with Flickr and several other social photo sharing sites.

Adobe's AIR uploader lets you drag and drop photos from your desktop to upload to Photoshop Express.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Users of the next Adobe Creative Suite may be able to mix and mash up the applications with online content and third-party tools.

In a bid to make workspaces more nimble, Adobe Systems is considering making parts of Photoshop and other Creative Suite applications available for users to manipulate within Flash widgets, according to a blog post Monday by John Nack, product manager of Photoshop.

The capability to bring tools from the Creative Suite to the desktop or the Web with Flash or Flex could lead to novel ways of exploring Adobe's expensive, hulking software. Users have mashed up Google Maps, for instance, to display apartment listings, ecological pollution, and even UFO sightings.

"The appeal of extending one's app with lightweight, cross-platform, network-aware widgets is so obvious that we were busy building support in my first app some eight years ago--and we had to build our own Flash Player clone to do it!" Nack wrote.

Developers would ideally be able to write one bunch of code rather than six separate chunks to create widgets for panels from Photoshop, Illustrator vector illustration, and InDesign page layout software, Nack added.

Adobe made its flagship photo-editing software available online with the March release of Photoshop Express.

The company aims to tell the public more about the next iteration of its Creative Suite on May 27.

A prerelease, beta edition of Flash Player 10 became available Tuesday via Adobe Labs. New features include effects for 3D-rendering effects and text-rendering enhancements.

Responding to criticism, Adobe Systems has modified the legal terms for using its online Photoshop Express service, a move the company promised would happen.

"Adobe has retained only those limited rights that allow us to operate the service and to enable you to do all the things the service offers," the company said in a statement. "If you decide to terminate your Photoshop Express account, Adobe's rights also will be terminated."

The earlier Photoshop Express terms of service had raised hackles among those concerned about a clause that gave Adobe sweeping rights to photos stored at the site. Those terms granted Adobe "a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such content and to incorporate such content into other materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

The new terms of service can be read at the company's site.

Adobe's VP of Hosted and Consumer Services refers to Photoshop Express as "the on-ramp to the Adobe digital-imaging franchise." Next exit Photoshop Elements? Construction delays? Slippery pavement ahead? The mind reels with metaphorical possibilities. With its familiar-looking organizational tools, slick Flash-based interface and robust retouching algorithms, Express embodies Adobe at its potential finest--this is a newborn beta, after all, and we should expect bugs. (If it should reach senior betahood, like Gmail, we will cease to forgive.) But there are also a few potholes in this on-ramp to beware.

The good: Slick, attractive interface; useful retouching tools and well-done interface for using them; most operations relatively fast.
The bad: Doesn't support photos from 12-megapixel or higher cameras; some unnattractive Terms of Service; no filtering or keywording; no printing options.
The bottom line: Though there's a lot to like about Adobe's first stab at online photo editing and sharing, you probably want to wait until the company fixes a few problems with the beta--and de-fangs its terms of service--before uploading scads of photos to Adobe Photoshop Express.

Ratings:
Design and ease of use: 8
Features: 7
Performance: 7
Policies: 5
Overall: 6.8

Photoshop Express is two things: a photo-sharing site targeting the millions of snapshot photographers who think software such as Photoshop Elements is too difficult, too disconnected or just too much, and a platform from which Adobe will serve partner sites with editing tools. At beta launch, Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa comprise the short list of partners; Flickr will be next in line, though a date has not been announced.

As a sharing site it's simultaneously pretty and functional. And it succeeds as a proof-of-concept that Flash and Flex allow you to create robust online applications that look and feel like local ones. For sharing, the feature set is pretty typical: it lets you upload photos into albums (up to 2GB), organize them, make them public for sharing or share them privately via email links, and generate and email nice-looking self-contained Flash slideshows. There's lots of dragging and dropping to organize, and a free vanity URL.

For editing, it delivers a better-than-average experience. In addition to a more-than-sufficient set of tools for adjusting exposure, color and sharpness and touching up artifacts like red-eye and fixing blemishes, it also supplies a basic set of specifial effects that let you turn bad or boring pictures into something a bit more interesting. The application also displays a snapshot history of your edits, which is a nice touch missing even from Adobe's desktop products. Most of the tools operate relatively quickly; only Distort left me singing the not-so-realtime blues. (For a discussion of the interface, click through the slide show.)

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Picnik, one of my personal favorites for editing photos online launched a new array of advanced editing tools a few hours ago. You can read about some of them from our earlier post, or the official announcement over at the company's blog. The biggest news is that many of the ones that previously required a paid, premium membership are now available to free users.

I got a chance to talk to Picnik's CEO Jonathan Sposato about the update, as well as the past and future of the company. The big topic was the looming release of Adobe's Photoshop Express, something that doesn't seem to have Sposato and company too worried. "Adobe has a business to protect. Picnik has a business to build," Sposato said. He also noted that early looks of the product (see coverage) show that there might not be integration with social services people are already using--something Sposato believes critical to Picnik's adoption, and that has served the company well.

As for competing services encroaching on Picnik's space, including FotoFlexer, which unveiled its no-fee Pro service last month, Sposato says his company is confident about the current road map and feature release schedule, which is set to trickle down to free users (just like what happened today). "We've got more engineers now, and that means we're able to turn out new features faster than before."

Looking back, Picnik became the official editor of photos on Flickr in December and has since experienced tremendous growth. The company wouldn't share its official numbers with us, but noted that Flickr has provided double digit percentages of site growth in addition to the highest ratio of users that give the free service a try and then upgrade to the premium membership. Sposato also noted that Flickr users are almost always uploading their shots back to the service, often replacing the original shot with the edited one--a process that is now reversible with the new history feature similar to the one for files seen over at Box.net.