« [REVIEW—NIKON COOLPIX P60] | Main | [REVIEW—CANON POWERSHOT A650is] »
May 15, 2008
[ WHAT’S THE CATCH? ]
OUT HERE ON THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SUPER HIGHWAY we are constantly astonished to find really useful applications and services that cost nothing. Free. Gratis.
And being of a naturally suspicious nature we can’t help asking ourselves: Where’s the catch? Who are these cyber Albert Schweitzers and Mother Teresas dedicated to making us happier and asking nothing in return?
We are not talking about open source software but products and services coming from commercial corporations, such as Adobe, for instance.
Have a look at Adobe’s new online photo editing, storing and sharing service, Photoshop Express. (www.photoshop.com/express/) It’s in beta form at the moment and it’s free.
There is the usual intrusive sign-in procedure, and once you’re in you upload the photos to be edited and start the process, which is based on an intuitive toolbar on the left of the screen. There are tools for crop, straighten, exposure, white balance, highlight and shadow levels, red eye removal and sharpening. A colour image can be turned into monochrome, with a selection of filter effects, and there is an attractive soft-focus glamour filter.
The retouch tool is similar to the healing brush in Photoshop and does a good job of removing warts and moles. Most editing functions are based on making a selection from an array of variations at the top of the screen with the change shown immediately on the main image.
There is even an option to turn a photograph into a sketch – well, in theory. The end result is pretty avant-garde.
The Undo button brings up a strip of images showing every step in the editing process. It works like History in Photoshop and provides for back-tracking to any point in the sequence.
Once the editing is complete the photos can be stored on the Adobe server. 2gb of space is provided for every user. The images are accessible as a slide show, with limited user control over the display.
The only problems we had with Photoshop Express were that the upload is slow – but that is a BigPond issue, not Adobe’s – and the images showing the variations from which choices are made are too small. In fact they are so small that even on a large, high resolution monitor it is difficult to pick differences between adjacent images.
Speaking of slow uploads on BigPond cable, that also affects our other useful freebie, YouSendIt.
YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com) is a service for transferring files that are so large your ISP won’t let you email them. The service is offered in four flavours: Pro, Business and Corporate, which incur a monthly charge, and Lite, which is free.
Lite subscribers can send files up to 100MB in size, one file at a time. To send multiple files we first Zip them into a single file. There is a monthly transmission limit of 1GB and a file can be downloaded a maximum of 100 times – in other words that’s the bulk transmission limit.
YouSendIt can install itself in the right button context menu of Windows for easy access. The file is uploaded – very slowly on BigPond – and an email notification is sent to the recipient, who clicks on an embedded link and retrieves the file. It is brilliantly simple and it is free.
Perhaps we should send them flowers. Or chocolates. We love them.
*
Posted by terry at May 15, 2008 01:40 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://bleedingedge.com.au/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1478
Comments
I have been playing with Photoshop Express beta for a while now and will echo the slow comments. If you think Bigpond cable usage is slow Terry try 512kb ADSL!
The integration with Flickr and sites like Facebook and Photobucket is terrific as it gives people a total on line photo editing and hosting product.
I like the concept and I think with a bit of development this application will be useful but I suspect (20 years in IT tends you make one cynical) that Adobes ultimate aim for this will not be as a free service but as a paid fully featured service that offers a limited range of free options in much the same way that there are plenty of pay for use ad ons for Flickr.
There are two things people should note.
The beta service is supposed to be for US residents only and by signing up you have to say that you are a US resident.
Initially there was a large amount of concern over the user agreement that was in place. Basically you gave the rights to your photos to Adobe. Adobe have corrected what appeared to be a genuine mistake (I'm not that cynical)but I would caution everybody to fully read and understand the user agreement before they start using the service.
Posted by: RichardR at May 16, 2008 05:26 AM