Adobe Flex is a Flash-based user interface builder and scripting language, and Adobe’s contribution to Macromedia’s Flash technology. Adobe is faced with a problem, however; although many companies are buying in to Flex for creating web interfaces, people just aren’t as excited about the possibilities of Flex than they are, say, about AJAX. At present, most of the web applications that are making headlines are ones that aim to replace their desktop-based brethren. Most of these applications, such as all of the Google applications, are built on technologies like AJAX. Few are using Flex for these purposes, and because Flex, in conjunction with Adobe’s Integrated Runtime, is essentially positioned as the next generation of Flash. Adobe, of course, would like to change that.

Thus, they created Photoshop Express. Photoshop Express (or Px, as the favicon will tell you,) is actually an online-photo manager similar to Flickr or Picasa Web Albums. You upload your photos, organize them, touch them up, and then share them. Besides being built entirely on Flash, the major talking point of Px is the photo editing functionality, which provides a few nice features not found in other services. Though currently in beta, anyone who wishes may sign up for the service and start using it. Each user gets 2 GB of storage for photos and their own web address for their public galleries; I’ve set up mine at http://modusoperandi.photoshop.com.

Upon first logging in, the upload files dialog is displayed. Luckily, it allows selecting multiple files at once through CTRL or Shift. Unluckily, only JPEG files are supported currently. The uploader has an option for what album, if any, the uploaded photos go into, although this is for all photos in the batch – albums can’t be selected on a photo by photo basis, although uploading them all at once and sorting later is a legitimate tactic. On the flip side, the uploader does allow removing photos to be uploaded and adding more before actually performing the upload. Progress is shown both per picture and overall, and the total file size is calculated and displayed; all-in-all, it’s a pretty nice uploading tool.

The main interface for Px is a good one, and it’s a shame that Adobe Flex Builder isn’t easier to acquire. The application expands to fit the window like any web page, and generally feels closer to a desktop application that alternative services; oh yeah, it looks pretty good, too.

For browsing photos, three views are offered: a thumbnail view, a details view, and a filmstrip view (compare with the Windows XP views of the same names.) Most users will find the thumbnails view best, as it strikes a good balance between displaying information (details) and the photo itself (filmstrip.) From these views, photos can be tagged, given captions, and rated. For additional information, a side panel may be displayed with other metadata, such as the camera and image dimensions.

The editing interface is also very good. Effects with sliders show thumbnails of the image with that degree of effect applied; these previews can be selected, or the slider can be used to tune the effect. Effects are applied instantaneously and are previews when the mouse hovers on the effect thumbnails. The editing tools are what make Px stand out. Some editing effects are new to a web-based editor, such as the Sketch or Distort filters.

Each user is given a My Gallery page, where they can enter some information about themselves and where all shared albums are displayed. Albums are only able to be viewed as a slideshow, but that slideshow can be paused. Links to public pictures can be emailed or just copied to the clipboard. Galleries can be linked to, emailed, or embedded in web pages with HTML.

One major feature Photoshop Express lacks that others don’t, however, is desktop integration. Picasa Web allows uploading from Picasa, Flickr supports several applications including Windows Live Photo Gallery and their own Flickr uploader. Another issue is responsiveness, something that most likely stems from Flash being as resource heavy as it is. The sharing features are also somewhat limited compared to others.

At the end of the day, Photoshop Express is shaping up to be a decent web photo manager, but more importantly, a decent example of a web application that can be created with Flex. With a few more features and some good optimizations, Adobe could have a real contender on their hands, and maybe sell a few copies of Flex Builder while they’re at it.

Adobe Photoshop Express