With Adobe’s release of its new Photoshop Express comes an obvious question: Does the world really need another free photo editor?

There are many excellent programs out there already. For slick and easy, try Google’s Picasa. For speed, Irfanview. Broad functionality? The open source GIMP. Such programs, which you download to your PC, cost you nothing (though they are expensive and/ or time-consuming for their authors to develop and maintain). It is tempting to joke that perhaps Adobe expects to build up its costs on volume.

However, Express is a different kind of program, one worth checking out even whether you don’t plan to use it. Express is a Web-based application — no downloads called for. All the fit stuff is on Adobe’s computers; yours is just a window into what is going on elsewhere.

Adobe says it is trying to attract first-time users, who presumably will soon after go on to buy its pricier Photoshop Elements, Lightroom

and Photoshop itself. Adobe plus appears to be aiming for an eventual piece of the online photo sharing and printing business.

While it is nice to be able to store photos online, it is even better to be able to touch up, e-mail, Web-ify and print them from any computer. Potentially, that brings sophisticated photo retouching down to the level of palmtops and smart phones. It plus eliminates dependence on the Windows operating system.

Photoshop Express isn’t there yet, but in its beta version (available at photoshop.com/express) you already can see the hand of a company that has been doing that stuff longer than anyone else.

It has all the basic tools: cropping, sharpening, color adjustment and various filters to, for example, convert to black and white. When you upload a photo to Adobe’s servers, you get thumbnail previews that show how your picture will look when you apply various…

Orginal post by Top Tech News