Adobe Photoshop was traditionally reserved for the likes of art and design professionals. These days though it seems like every man, woman and child with a computer dabbles with the software. As if to confirm its place in pop culture, Photoshop now has its own iPhone app, in the shape of Photoshop Express.
In truth, this app is an extremely watered-down version of Photoshop, which is very limited in its functionality. Photoshop Express allows you to perform basic image editing tasks, giving you the option to select a photo from your iPhone, or take one using the device's camera.
You'll find four drop-down menus at the top of the Photoshop Express interface, from where you can access the editing tools. The first is for cropping, rotating and flipping images; the second lets you tweak exposure, saturation, tint and black and white settings; the third applies sketch or soft focus effects; and the final menu lets you choose from a variety of special effects. The effects in Photoshop Express include Rainbow, Border, Pop, and more.
Great use of touch
As you'll probably be thinking by now, this isn't exactly a powerful array of tools. Well, it's not, but then Photoshop Express is really just designed for quick photo editing on the move. If viewed in this way, it's actually a great success because the user interface is just so intuitive. Photoshop Express makes intelligent use of the iPhones touch technology. For example, Saturation and Exposure editing requires you to swipe across the screen to increase the intensity of the effect. Meanwhile, rotating and flipping is done by manipulating the image with your finger. Weirdly though, you can't pinch the screen to zoom into a photo. In fact, Photoshop Express has no zoom at all.
What's great about Photoshop Express is that once you've finished capturing and editing your pictures, you can quickly put them up online via the Upload tool, to Photoshop.com, Twitter or Facebook
All in all, Photoshop Express is a decent portable, on-the-fly image editor. Just don't expect anything more than the most basic of imaging tools.
