PhotoShop Express vs. Paint.NET

Almost daily, I use some sort of digital editing program. Over the years my top 5 tools for digital editing have been Paint.NET and Photoshop. I use both programs daily for editing screen shots, creating educational material/training manuals, and blog posts. I love Paint.NET simply for the fact that its VERY quick to load and performs easy tasks quite quickly. On my machine Paint.NET is up and running in under 5 seconds. Paint.NET helped get the easy tasks done, but when I wanted to perform true graphics manipulation and do some hardcore stuff, I’d fire up Photoshop. The one thing that always crossed my mind was why Adobe did not offer a "Photoshop Lite" type of program. Paint.NET has always been my "Photoshop Lite" since it was released. But, I still wondered why Adobe was missing out on this market.

Well, the other day Adobe released Photoshop Express. With my previous pondering finally answered, I HAD TO check out this product from Adobe. Could this be the "Photoshop Lite" I was hoping for?

My First False Assumption

My first initial impression upon reading the product SKU name "Photoshop Express" was that it was going to be a slimmed down version of Photoshop similar to Paint.NET that was installable. Having worked with Visual Studio for a very long time, I’ve become adjusted to recommending the "Express" SKU’s to developers interested in .NET development. I’d recommend the Visual Studio Express SKU because it allowed them to get the feel for a good IDE (slimmed down on features of course) but they still got to use a lot of built in functionality, and it was FREE. That was the nice thing (note: if you’re a student you can utilize the Dreamspark campaign to get a free version of Visual Studio Pro, and other products).

Was this the slimmed down version? No… not at all. Not only was this version not slimmed down, it wasn’t even installable – its a pure browser based solution. I was thinking that maybe it was a "Click Once" app, nope. Not even close. This is purely a browser based solution. Ok, that’s not too bad, then I started to use it…

My Second False Assumption

I believe a company of Adobe’s caliber would be able to create a compelling graphics app that would be very responsive and effective – regardless of the platform (install or web). Anyone who has worked with any graphics program knows that they are memory hogs. Literally, they eat memory for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner (and some snacks between). They need to utilize a vast memory base to keep the program responsive – I like to say – if its a’ swappin’ it’s a’ doggin’. I had assumed that this program would be snappy like its big brother Photoshop. Nope. Not at all.

Since Photoshop Express is a web based hosted solution the images have to be uploaded to the server. The problem lies in the last four words of that sentence. Uploaded to the server. I don’t know about you, but there is nothing snappy about loading up a 2MB file to a web site. Applying the filters are rudimentary, adjusting contrast, color balance and other tasks leave your image looking like you took a trip back to hippyville with too many pink elephants.

Conclusion

I had assumed I might be able to replace Paint.NET with Photoshop Express upon its initial release. Unfortunately Photoshop Express is insanely slow and the graphic manipulation tools that I need to accomplish my tasks are not what I need them to be. The lack of options are kind of a bummer and the responsiveness of the app is less than lackluster. But I’ll say this… its a good attempt. Maybe version 2.x will be better.

How could Adobe get me to use the app? They could make it a Click-Once app. Make it a local installation. Follow the Visual Studio Express SKU model. Look at Paint.NET, It’s worked great for them, why wouldn’t it work for Adobe? I know they have a ginormous Apple following so they’d have to use a installation procedure that would work with MAC’s as well as Windows. Possibly supporting two different models of the software is just too much for them at this point to foot the bill for a Free product and support. But, if they did go down the route of an installable Express type of app, I’d be all over it.

For the meantime I’ll be sticking with Paint.NET. It’s installable. Its a subset of Photoshop Features, and the real key is… ITS FAST. Any tool that I use MUST BE FAST. If its not, its gone.

 

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Screenshot of Paint.NET	Screenshot of Photoshop Express