Adobe releases free web-based version of PhotoShop

I’m not a PhotoShop user but all my photography consulting clients are. This latest player in the web-based services applications game underscores what I’ve been telling people for years: the software you use very day to run your business will one day all be “on the cloud” or web-based. Anything you now have to do while tethered to your desktop computer, you’ll soon be able to do from any computer… anywhere just by logging into your account. All you need is good access to the web. I personally love this trend and already use a number of web based applications to run my own business (e.g. Google Docs).

Here’s an except from a story appearing March 27th, 2008 on the AP news service about the “beta’ version of their new, web-based application, PhotoShop Express :

“Web-based software is increasingly popular, and Adobe knows it’s got to get on that train, said Kathleen Maher, an analyst at Jon Peddie Research.Many kinds of software are available for use online in a trend known as “software as a service,” or “cloud computing.” The earliest were e-mail programs, but they now include services to create and manage content and even whole operating systems. And they don’t require time-consuming upgrades because they’re maintained by the service provider.
Google Inc. provides a host of such services, as do Microsoft Corp. and others.”This is the battlefield where Adobe and Microsoft and Google are going to fight some pretty big battles,” Maher said.”