So I signed up for an account at Photoshop Express the other day (that's me at aquariumdrinker.photoshop.com, and have only had a few minutes to play around with it. What I can't figure out is what it's for.
Its photo editing feature set is, I think, similar to Flickr's and certainly no larger than that offered by Picasa. If it's for photo organizing and sharing, well then it just seems kind of lame. The amount of space offered with the free account isn't staggering compared to other services and the sharing options are weak ("embedding" a slideshow actually just results in a small version of one of the photos that is an HTML link to the photoshop.com site where you can watch the slideshow). What's worse, the whole thing comes off like a demo of what's possible with Flash, with little thought appearing to have gone into designing a reasonable user interface. I've spent as much time hunting for features as experimenting with them, and that goes for features I've already found once and can't find again.
It's in beta, and brand spanking new, so maybe Adobe will be able to identify a hole that Photoshop Express can fill. For now, though, I can't help but think that its designers go out for a beer after work and pump each other up about how if they'd come out with this like, three years ago? It would have totally blown Flickr out of the water.
Yuck.
What makes Flickr great is what makes Google great: an incredibly simple user interface, both visually and HTML-wise. Flickr could do fancy Flash crap like that if they wanted to, but they've opted for a more universal user experience.
From clicking a few places in your account there (lovely primate baby pics, btw), I have no desire to return to that website at all.
This is just another example of a huge company wasting development money without thinking very much. Perhaps the hardcore Photoshop users will dig it, I don't know. It's certainly not what the general public wants or needs.
agreed
Eccept I'd add that the possible audience you mentioned would need to be more than hardcore photoshop fans. I think what you're describing crosses into "fanboy" territory. I'd think that most Photoshop fans would have long since found a home for their images online.
This is my first post ever to this site from a mobile device!
Concur
I was sort of wondering what the point was, too. If I edit photos at all I do it lightly in iPhoto, or extensively in Photoshop (or one of the other apps I'm playing around with at the moment), or, very rarely, after uploading to Flickr in Picnik, say to crop before using in a blog post. I don't see any niche for Photoshop Express, either, at least not in my chaotic workflow. Also, the pages won't load for me at all in Firefox (which is acting all weird since I tried the new beta) and since I can't see the point of it in the first place, I haven't bothered fooling around in it in another browser.
So it didn't surprise me when I saw the thing on Slashdot about it being mainly a marketing thing -- and not a well-done marketing thing, from my experience.
"not well-done" indeed
Especially with regards to hopes that users will pay for a premium version. That's a bit giving away gray-meat hamburgers in the hopes that people will eventually pay for gray-meat hamburgers that come with pickles and onions.