nextwebgen.com

Adobe has announced it will release a web edition of Photoshop. Yes, it will almost certainly be Flash based, not pure Ajax (technology aside, it’s the logical choice for the owner of the Flash platform!). Still, it’s big news for anyone involved in rich web apps…it wasn’t long ago when people would cite graphical editors as a typical example of what not to webify. Today, we already have several web-based image editors in production, and today’s news means we will soon have an official web edition of the best known desktop image editor.

Hoping to get a jump on Google and other competitors, Adobe Systems plans to release a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing application within six months, the company’s chief executive said Tuesday. The online service is part of a larger move to introduce ad-supported online services to complement its existing products and broaden the company reach into the consumer market, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen told CNET News.com.

Software publishers have often produced free or inexpensive “lite” editions. Now, it seems, Adobe’s plan is to use the web for a lite edition and continue using the desktop for the full package. It makes sense from the user’s perspective, as the web is an ideal, low-barrier, platform for trying out an app. On the other hand, you have to wonder about the engineering effort involved in maintaining dual editions - maybe this is where technologies like Adobe’s Apollo come in, to let you share code between desktop and web.

Chizen said Adobe laid the foundation for a hosted Photoshop product with Adobe Remix, a Web-based video-editing tool it offers through the PhotoBucket media-sharing site … Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe’s more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising.

Adobe’s announcement comes a few days after Google introduced its premium Google Apps service, charging $50/user/yr for companies to use Google’s various Ajax tools, and Adobe is upfront about the impetus for this new initiative.

The hosted version of Photoshop is part of a bigger company strategy to introduce Internet-delivered services that complement its shrink-wrapped applications and head off likely competition from Google…”That is new (for Adobe). It’s something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises,” Chizen said.