Now, the real on-line Photoshop...or is it?

Just the other day, I was posting about Splashup, a kind of web-based Photoshop wannabe. And now, the REAL web-based Photoshop comes to the spotlight. Adobe Systems has rolled out Photoshop Express, a web-based application for editing, organizing, and sharing images. The application, which runs in Flash-enabled browsers, is free and an account includes 2GB of storage.

At first, the idea of having a real (and free) Photoshop application sounded to good to be true. And as soon as I checked it out, I was able to verify that indeed it was (to good to be true, that is). I was amazed to see that the previously referred Splashup is more of a Photoshop-like application than this web-based application will ever be.

The image that you see here is a sample of the functionalities that are available in Photoshop Express. As you can see, this web-application is more of a wizard-like kind of application where you can only apply a few limited basic effects like adjusting the exposure of some photo, remove red-eyes or crop/rotate pictures.

In fact, it does make sense, you cannot ask Adobe to give away for free the only thing that they have for sale. So, even though this web-based Photoshop Express application is not for the Photoshop pros out there, it is still quite a good alternative to those photo-sharing websites where you can do some basic image editing.

But if you want a full-fleshed Photoshop web application, with such complex functionalities as layers and brushes (and especially if you already are a Flickr user), go for Splashup.