Adobe Kills Free Photoshop Application, Urges Users Online

Although I’m not entirely stoked about it, there’s a huge shift lately in how companies would like us to use their software. If you ask Google, they believe any application you need should be available online, and they’ve proved it by offering suites of various sources that way (including their very popular office suite). But what about applications that are incredibly robust, such as Photoshop?

Well, as much as hate working with applications of any sort online (I’ll always be a desktop guy), there are some applications that, when done right, will work online just fine,  like image manipulation tools, such as the one offered by Adobe at Photoshop.com. Obviously what’s offered online here isn’t going to be near as robust as the full-blown suite, but rather, it’s designed people on a low budget, or people who just want to take care of quick photo edits fast.

The reason that the site is significant now, is because Adobe has just discontinued their Photoshop Album Starter Edition application, which has always been free, in order to push people towards their online service. It’s an interesting move, to say the least, because rather than have people use their free desktop application, they’d rather people use their bandwidth and be confined to a web browser. Seems a wee bit odd to me, but once again, I am not a web apps guy.

How do you guys feel about this? Would you rather use Photoshop in a web browser than on the desktop? I admit, it is a nice feature if you are on the go and need a quick photo edit, but I don’t recall the last time when I was in that situation, and without my notebook. Either way, I realize I’m probably in the minority, as it’s far from being only Adobe that’s starting to throw such robust applications online.

The move reflects the growing importance of Web-based applications even for software powerhouses such as Adobe. Web applications, even when using relatively sophisticated technology such as Adobe’s Flash, are typically primitive compared to what can run on a computer, but they offer advantages in sharing, maintenance, and remote access from multiple computers and mobile devices. And of course the Web is gradually growing more sophisticated as a foundation for applications.