One of the world’s most-used photo-editing softwares could soon be available to everyone on the internet - for free. Adobe is said to be testing a free-to-use web version of its popular photo-editing software Photoshop. As of now, according to multiple reports, this freemium web version of Adobe Photoshop is being trialed in Canada.
According to a report on The Verge, the company “plans to open the service up to everyone as a way to introduce more users to the app.” According to the report, users are able to access Photoshop on the web through a free Adobe account. “Adobe describes the service as ‘freemium’ and eventually plans to gate off some features that will be exclusive to paying subscribers. Enough tools will be freely available to perform what Adobe considers to be Photoshop’s core functions,” The Verge report explains.
Adobe Photoshop is one of the most widely used photo-editing softwares around the world. According to the Adobe website, over 90% of the world’s creative professionals use Photoshop. But as a report on Gizmodo explains, “this powerful tool is also an expensive one”. The cheapest plan starts at $10/month for 20GB of cloud storage, Gizmodo’s Phillip Tracy writes in a recent report. Tracy says this stripped-down, browser version of the popular photo editor will not only “give more users access to the core features of Photoshop” but also bring it to “less capable systems, including Chromebooks”. “One of the major downsides of using a Chrome OS-based laptop over a Windows system is the lack of Adobe apps, including Photoshop. With a web version, everyone can access Photoshop from any device, including the millions of students using Chromebooks,” Tracy writes.
Last October, Adobe launched the web version for its subscribers. It was introduced to the web as a beta (running in Chrome and Edge browsers). “In it, you can try out the commenting workflow and test some early Photoshop editing features we are piloting on the web. You and your collaborators can now open and view Photoshop cloud documents in the browser, provide feedback, and make basic edits all in one place without having to download or launch the app,” a blog post on the Adobe website explained.
According to The Verge report, the company provided no timeline on when this freemium version of Photoshop would be accessible to more people.
Also read: Facebook AI software can find the origins of deepfake images