Photoshop Express is an online Rich Internet Application that is, and I'm paraphrasing here, "targeted at a younger, less sophisticated audience, allowing them quick and easy ways to manipulate images bound for a blog, Facebook or Myspace". I swear, that is what the marketing says.

While certainly not targeted at serious photographers, it is an interesting move into the RIA space for low-end photo tweaking and begs some playing with. If you don't have the $$ to drop on a photo editing application, then this will provide some basic tweaking functionality. Furthermore, it does have some interesting features - 2 GB of free online storage and some nice flash galleries for sharing photos with others.

I know I periodically get a big email with a bunch of 4 MB images attached from someone a bit clueless about that new digital camera they just purchased at Costco - this will be great for them.

Here is a video from Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski from Photoshop Insider talking about it (Via Photoshop Insider):



Terry White, also of Adobe, has a great over view here.

There is an online learning resource for Photoshop Express here.

On other fronts, those searching for a competent point and shot digital camera should celebrate. In the past, it has been hard to find a decent pocketable camera with the functionality (read: Raw, manual control, decent 400-800 ISO performance) that a professional wanted. Up until now, there has been few choices: the Panasonic/Leica hybrid LX2/DLux3 (which I have), the new Canon G9 and the Ricoh GRD series. Each had some of the stuff we needed, but they all suffered in the performance and ISO department. Well, Sigma finally got around to shipping the DP1 in the last few weeks, and the reviews are starting to trickle in.

PopPhoto just published a review of this new portable wonder and they were impressed, with a few caveats (performance, lack of IS).

I had a chance to manhandle one at WPPI and Sigma just might have a winner on its hands - and it even has 16:9,which was a big factor in my buying the LX2/DLux3. The Sigma's lens is slow (f4) and the buffer is small, leading to poor Raw performance (flash ram is cheap, so I'm not sure why this is still an issue) but its a lovely camera and it might end up in my bag before too long. Its nice to have a backup that is pocketable.

Go Sigma.