I’ve used Picasa and Flickr, a pair of excellent web-based photo organizers. They give users a way to sort and share large numbers of digital pictures. One downside has been the ability to edit images. I tend to use Photoshop Elements to do the editing I need because the online tools don’t give me all the options I need.

Adobe has released a potential remedy to this problem: Photoshop Express. It is currently in beta form, which means it is still officially in “test” mode. Patrick and I took a look at this beta today and found it to be quite nice! You can preview the effect of a potential edit by hovering a mouse over a thumbnail. Cropping, distortion, filters, color sampling and replacement, redeye reduction, and lighting fixes are all included.

Adobe is currently giving users 2GB of space on their servers, and the best part of all: integrated access to Facebook, Picasa, and Photobucket. I was able to edit pictures and upload pictures directly to my Facebook profile with a minimum of fuss. I had to log into Facebook to tag them and correct the captions though.

A couple of downsides: there is currently no way to order prints online (I can only imagine this will come in time) and you are currently limited to JPG images of 10MB or less. Not a big limitation but a notable one.

I for one am totally thrilled with this application. It offers me the ability to do moderately sophisticated editing from anywhere, with direct access to web photo sites. I wonder how it will hold up with thousands of people creating accounts to try out this beta software…