Coffee Break

Adobe has launched a public beta of its web-based Photoshop Express image editor aimed at average consumers who want to quickly touch-up their photos and share them with friends online. Similar to Flickr, the service offers users two gigabytes of online storage, but does set some limits, so photos can't be bigger than 4,000 pixels in height and width or 10 megabytes.Either way, the service is very handy for beginners looking for a simple image-editing application. Some of the basic editing functions in Photoshop Express include red-eye removal, auto correct, crop and rotate. Filters that let you add highlights, soft focus, saturation, and sharpness to your photos are also available.You do have to set up an account to start using the service, but I thought it was worthwhile especially if want to correct some of your older photos. Once logged in you can allow the service to automatically connect to sites like Picasa, Photobucket, and Facebook.

After authorizing the application to work with Facebook, all my images were immediately uploaded to the new service, which I found quite useful. Once the images show up in your new Photoshop Express account, you can edit them and save any changes to your Facebook account.

The image editing application is Flash based, so you do need to have that installed. You'll also need a computer running Windows XP or Vista or Mac OS 10.4. Overall, the application is slow at times, but useful for newbies that don't need a heavy duty image-editing program.

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