“They have a whole market that they are missing out on, and they need to make sure that the market is aware there is a Photoshop solution for them. As that market grows and becomes more sophisticated, hopefully it will generate money,” stated Ron Glaz, an analyst at IDC, a market intelligence firm.

Adobe Systems Inc. has made another dramatic move. After making at least 9 versions of their popular software, Photoshop, the San Jose, Calif.-based company decided to make their well-known software available to the web for free. This effort poses a threat to some of the other popular online photo editing companies such as Picnik, Picasa, and SnipShot.

This is not the first time that Adobe has made a huge contribution to the web. A few years ago, Adobe acquired Macromedia, the makers of Flash. Today Adobe Flash is the foundation for all online video sharing web sites like YouTube and DailyMotion.

With Photoshop Express, users can crop/rotate/tweak/resize/edit photos. Adobe is also providing users 2GB of space to host their photos for free. After editing photos, Adobe Photoshop Express users can build galleries in a grid or 3D format.

Photoshop Express is available at: http://www.photoshop.com/express/

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: Adobe Unveils Webtop Version of Photoshop. Picnik Is Not Scared by Erick Schonfeld

Late last month I wrote about online photo editor, Picnik. And at the time, I was thinking that online photo editing couldn’t get any better. But it turns out that I was wrong. As of today, Snipshot is the best that I have seen.

First reason: The Snipshot import Bookmarklet [how it works] makes it easy to edit any image you find on any website.

Second reason: Snipshot has an API that allows you to embed the pics that you edit online seamlessly on to your own websites.

Third reason: Import pictures directly from picture or (1st page of) PDF file URLs.

Once you are done editing your files, you can also export the images to your Flickr or Webshots account. Also, you can save the image as a PNG, GIF, JPG, PSD, TIF, and/or PDF. Image alteration features include Undo, Resize, Crop, Enhance, Adjust (Size, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, Sharpness), and Rotate.

In terms of feature quantity, Picnik’s basket of goods is a little bit greater. Both have a pretty sleek UI though.

Picnik’s:

SnipShot’s:

SnipShot has been funded by Y-Combinator, early stage investors of JamGlue and Reddit. Both, Picnik and SnipShot are great tools, but the fact that they are substitutable of each other is a bit worrying. Picnik and SnipShot are relatively new and may stand in the way of each other’s progression. It is survival of the fittest at this point and it seems like SnipShots evolutionary path is in the lead because of its website-importing interconnectivity.

Picnik vs. SnipShot Tech Specs:
It appears that Picnik utilizes Adobe Flash technology, whereas SnipShot uses server-side Java processing. This could cause SnipShot to hit a wall if the site really takes off and there are many users logged into the site at once. Because YouTube utilizes Flash media, the video-sharing site did not have as many technical difficulties as the site should have had with all that incoming traffic.