If Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic are all overkill for you, but you still want to improve or enhance your pictures a bit, Adobe offers the free Photoshop Express. This free photo editing app is available for mobile, web, and desktop platforms. Express features Adobe’s renowned imaging smarts, with a deep supply of tools for correcting and embellishing your photos. Far from being the basic, stripped-down photo editor it was when it launched, Express has a lot of features, most of them aimed sharing online. The catch? You need to pay if you want to use many of its best features.
It’s worth noting that Photoshop Express is not Adobe’s only intro-level app for editing photos—far from it. Most require a Creative Cloud subscription, however, including Photoshop Fix, Photoshop Mix, and the Lightroom mobile app. Another is Photoshop Camera, which, beyond just being a replacement for your phone’s default camera app, lets you apply some zany creative effects to spice up your Instagram feed. None of those, however, offers Photoshop Express’s mix of basic adjustment and layer effects, and several require the more expensive subscription.
How Much Does Photoshop Express Cost?
As mentioned just above, Photoshop Express is free to download, but you do need an Adobe account (it can be a free account). You can sign up with your Facebook or Google account if you don’t already have an Adobe account. Using some of the product’s more charming features requires paying for a Premium subscription, which costs $4.99 per month, $34.99 per year, with a first-year offer of $9.99.
You can find the app on the mobile app stores and Windows 10’s app store, but no app is available for macOS, Amazon Fire tablets, or Chrome OS. Not to worry, though: Any device can use the Photoshop Express web app. I tested on a Windows 10 PC, iPhone, and Google Pixel. That said, the app differs depending on which platform you run it on. For example, the Windows store app doesn’t bother with the Premium option, instead merely proposing that you buy Lightroom in a banner ad. And only the iPhone version lets you Remove background and create a transparent background image.
After signing in to your account, you can decide whether you want the app to be able to access photos on your device, which is necessary for a photo editing app. Some sections of the interface take you through a quick tour of the app’s capabilities.
To use all of the app’s features, you’ll need to shell out for a PS Express Premium subscription. This adds the ability to use any tools marked with a blue star. These include selection, layers, noise reduction, HSL editing, and many themes, overlays, and looks. It’s probably my biggest beef about the app that the premium features are often staring you in the face, but I guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Interface
The app’s simple interface has three main buttons across the top: Edit, Collage, and Mix. The first two are self-explanatory; Mix includes more-advanced tools such as subject selection, local edits, and blending multiple photos in layers. One thing I especially like about the interface is that every effect shows your photo in thumbnail that illustrates what it does, and the Undo arrows are things I consider essential for any editing app.
The mobile apps offer connections to desktop versions of the full Photoshop application, so you can send a picture from Express to the big app on your desktop, or even use some Photoshop effects in the app, such as block collages, reflections, weave, oil paint, and more.
You can open photos from not only your camera roll, but also from Facebook, Google Photos, or Dropbox (but not OneDrive), or you can shoot a new photo from within the app. The in-app camera app isn’t just for taking plain pictures, but lets you apply depth effects, face art, double exposures, or artistic filters. The app works with raw camera files, but only in the paid Premium version on mobile and not at all in the web version.
Adjusting Photos
Cropping is well done in the app: You can choose among preset aspect ratios for common social network applications like Facebook profile and cover images, Instagram squares, and Twitter posts. You can also crop freely or just keep the picture’s original aspect ratio. You can straighten a photo to line up with the horizon, and the mobile apps have an Automatic option for this.
As with any self-respecting photo editing app, Express can adjust exposure, shadows, highlights, color temperature, tint, and saturation. To these it adds Lightroom specialties, Vibrance (to punch up colors) and Clarity (to pump up contrast and sharpness); you don’t however get Lightroom’s newer tools: Texture and Enhance Details. You do get Dehaze and Noise Reduction (of both the luminance and color varieties) if you’re a Premium subscriber.
Filters and Looks
The app includes several instant fixes and effects, some of the more charming of which are called Charms. These add or subtract contrast and give images different warm or cold hues. The Basic Looks include Autumn as well as the other seasons and other Instagram-esque filters, including black and white options.
Another instant edit option for your photo is to use Themes. These not only apply different treatments to the photo itself, but also add editable text overlays. Theme sets are grouped into Social, Travel, Life Events, Portraits, Landscapes, Food, Fashion, and a few other treatments. You get just a couple free ones in each category, with the rest being only for Premium subscribers.
The Overlays option lets you add light leaks, bokeh, and textures such as Grunge and Patterns to spice up your image. Sometimes adding a shaft of light coming down at an angle from one side of a photo really does add interest, and those looking for artistic, nonrealistic output will appreciate the textures.
Collages
Collages make up one of the more popular treatments for social posts, and Photoshop Express gives you a wealth of options for them. Even free users get a good number of layouts to choose from, but if you want shapes other than rectangles, you need a paid subscription. You can apply some pleasing style transfers to your collages. A Scrapbook option (Premium) automatically cuts out the photo’s subjects, placing them on different background options, including solid colors, patterns, and gradients. Stickers, preset text overlays, and borders round out the options for your collage.
Local Adjustments and Layers
The Mix section of the app is where you find layer effects. Only Premium subscribers can use Photoshop-like blending modes, though you can use the transparency slider for free. Layers let you use any of the other features in the app and stack them on top of each other. The standard Photoshop app (for Creative Cloud subscribers) offers stronger layer editing, though it lacks some of Express’ instant tools.
The Cutout tool (Premium) follows in Adobe’s tradition of strong selection tools: Just draw a box around the object or person you want to select, and the app does the reset. You can refine your selection with an erase brush or refine it using the Feather option. These are all tools you can find in the very full featured PicsArt app, too.
The Heal tool is basic, not letting you select a source area. Even the Premium version just adds feather, size, and opacity options. If retouching is among your photo editing needs, you’d do better to get the full Photoshop mobile app, which requires a $9.99-per-month subscription.
Export, Share, and Output
You can of course send your finished image to local photo storage on your device, but you can also send it to not only Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, but also to the app’s own PS Express Discover sharing community, where users are able to remix it if you allow.
If you’re a Creative Cloud subscriber and want to keep working on the picture, you can send it to Lightroom, Photoshop, or to your Creative Cloud storage. (Though it’s not explicitly mentioned in the app, storing to the cloud allows you to continue work in Photoshop Elements, the often-forgotten relative in the Adobe photo software family.) But that’s not all—you can also send it to WhatsApp, email, or other messaging apps.
The Express Lane to Photo Editing
You can do a lot of fun and powerful editing in Adobe Photoshop Express, though you’ll often run into a paywall along the way. Creative Cloud subscribers will likely prefer the standard Photoshop app for their mobile devices and the full program for their desktops. And pro photographers will want Lightroom, which offers strong mobile and online apps.
Still, if you just need to do some basic editing and maybe add a bit of social bling to your photos, the free version may well be enough for you. And the paid version only costs $34.99—far less than a year’s subscription to Creative Cloud—and offers a potent if small collection of features and tools. If you’re looking for a simple photo editing app, Adobe Photoshop Express is well worth considering.
