Are There Free Versions of Photoshop?

                Photoshop has long been the industry standard photo editing tool for designers, photographers, and hobbyists looking to alter and/or enhance their images. While Adobe does offer some substantial discounts to students, there is not a completely free offering available of the traditional software at this time. However, Adobe has developed a free online version of its popular software to compete with the likes of Picnik and others, called Photoshop Express.

Built using Adobe's own Flex technology, the online version of Photoshop offers most of the basic functionality one can expect to use for all but the most creative of tasks. Here is a sample of the basic tools available to the user:

Crop & Rotate
Resize
Auto Correct
Exposure
Red-Eye
Touchup
Saturation

The online editor also features several color adjustment options, such as:

White Balance
Highlight
Fill LIght
Sharpen
Soft Focus

There is an advanced set of tools available to further tweak your photos:

Pop Color
Hue
Black & White
Tint
Sketch
Distort

After you're done editing your photo, you can opt to open the decorative options to add some flair to the image. Decorative options come in the form of frames and graphical overlays that add to the presentation of the photo. The options are:

Text
Bubbles
Stickies
Party
Animals
Costumes
Sports
Miscellaneous
Expressions
Frames

You can save all your images to your free account that you create at the Photoshop Express website. From here you can share your images with friends, download to your home computer, and a variety of other choices.

While the online incarnation of Photoshop is less feature rich than the full version, it is more than adequate for casual editing. Unless you need for the more advanced tools of the standard software, consider handling your image editing for free online.