Shared Creation Magazine

Last week I noted the launch of Photoshop Express, but at that time I was unable to test it.

Now I have.

Which gave me the problem of reviewing it without gushing too much. Then I decided that perhaps what you needed to know should come in a bit of a torrent.

It is a seriously beautiful, flexible and powerful web application. It comes with 2GB of server storage for free (nice!) but most importantly this is a clever piece of software. It is not going to replace Photoshop on a desktop, but for quick editing and presenting of photographs it is ideal. After using it you cannot help to thing that the day of software as  service for most people is pretty much here.

From an artistic point it gives you a great deal of control of your photographs from any Internet enabled location.

One odd thing I did notice - it integrates with a lot of web services such as Photobucket and Facebook; yet it does not allow you to load photos from Flickr. This is a great shame. I can’t help but wonder if that is something to do with Adobes long term plans for Express. Will it be a Flickr killer? I can’t answer that one yet. All I can say is that I really like Photoshop Express

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We’ve mentioned a few online photograph editing systems in the past but none with so venerable a name as this. Adobe has launched its much anticipated online version of Photoshop. I haven’t had a chance to study it in depth yet so - take this as an announcement. No doubt I’ll take a longer look in the near future.

In the meantime if you want to know more here is the website:

https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

http://workerant.co.uk is a new web site for those who work from home or alone. The idea is simple - People who need work done place ads on the site and people who want to do work can advertise themselves on it.

It supplies a place for those who want to work and those who work to meet up.

At the moment the site is young, but already there are adverts for designers and photographers on it. This could well grow if WorkerAnt takes off.

This could become a useful resource for those who are trying to step into the world of working in a creative capacity for themselves. If you have a demonstrable talent this may help you start to make an income from it.

Myartspace - the social networking site for artists has just released a new service. It is the daily news feed.

Here’s the idea - everyday a piece of contemporary art will be placed on the feed to be viewed through RSS Readers, Emails, Facebook Apps - or just about anywhere else that can render an RSS feed. This is a subscription based service. Which means you have to sign up for it. Fortunately it is free to receive - so this is one subscription that you can afford.

There is of course a flip side to the Daily Art feed - and that is - it will need content. So there is a great opportunity here for the artist to get something widely distributed - but for just one day. That’s an exciting concept. What difference to a new artist can one day make. Potentially quite a bit with a service like this. To submit work - you simply need to go the sign up page and follow the instructions from there.

It’ll be interesting to see what comes out this service.

Technorati Tags: Art, Facebook, RSS

I recently heard about photosharing website Smug Mug and decided to take a look. I haven’t joined up yet, mostly because it is not free and seems very US centred. Not a problem for those of you in the states though.

So what is it?

Basically its another place to store photos online, and have them seen by many. What is nice to see - is a serious about backup. Photos are stored in three distinct locations and right up front you have an option to receive backup DVDs - that is a nice feature. There is also a bit of a focus on obtaining prints of your work on a variety of surfaces - not new but nice to see.

What really stood out was that Smugmug are seriously squaring up to the mighty Flickr. Offering a method of transferring all your pictures out of Flickr to Smugmug. I’m assuming that this is via the Flickr api’s. Right now with Yahoos future being a little cloudy and Flickr not making much in the way of cold hard cash (there are reports of Flickr being a loss maker for Yahoo), that is something that may gain the notice of the technorati. Personally I’d say - wait a little before jumping out of fear. Or at least size up all the alternative services first.  However having a migration saves you a lot of work.

I’m also going to quickly mention professional photographers. The pro account on Smugmug costs $149.95 per year but offers a lot of control on controlling your online galleries.

So what do I think? It looks interesting and I’d be more interested if I was in the States. It is at least another tool in the photographers arsenal. We also haven’t mentioned something like this in a while - so a welcome return to this type of website.

Technorati Tags: SmugMug, Photography, Web, Site, Sharing