There’s a school of thought among some tech thinkers that the future of the personal computer lies with web-based applications rather than computer-based applications.  In other words, instead of writing a letter using the Microsoft Word application installed on your computer, you would use your web browser to access a full-featured, web-based version of Word.  You would even be able to store your documents on Microsoft’s servers.

Although Microsoft doesn’t yet offer such an application, others do.  With today’s Google Docs you can create, edit, and store word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents in Microsoft-compatible formats.

Digital media editing giant Adobe threw its digital hat into the web-based application ring back in February of 2007 by releasing Adobe Premiere Express, a free on-line video editing tool for users of YouTube, Photobucket, and MTV.com.  Near the end of 2007, Adobe announced “Buzzword”, a Flash-based word processor.

Last week Adobe brought Photoshop, their industry-standard photo editing application, to the web, calling it “Photoshop Express”.  It’s a beta version, and here’s how it works.

Sign up for free, and Adobe gives you 2 GB of web space to store your photos.  You upload your photos into a Library, where they can be further organized into Albums.  You can perform the following edits on your photos:  Crop & Rotate, Auto Correct, Exposure, Red-Eye Removal, Touchup, Saturation, White Balance, Highlight, Fill Light, Sharpen, Soft Focus, Pop Color, Hue, Black & White, Tint, Sketch, and Distort.  Quite a laundry list.  After applying an edit, you can download the photo back onto your computer if you wish.

You can email individual photos, as well as upload photo Albums into a personalized web Gallery.  Viewers of your photo slideshows are treated to Flash-based “eye candy” – photos fly, flow and float fluidly across the screen (now there’s a lot of alliteration).  They can customize their viewing experience, but cannot download your photos onto their computers.

Photoshop Express, as the name implies, doesn’t even come close to providing a fraction of the computer-based Photoshop’s capabilities.  It is obviously designed for the social networking crowd.  Photos in the popular photo sharing sites FaceBook, Photobucket, and Picassa can be edited easily through direct links to Photoshop Express.

Again, Photoshop Express is free (at least during the beta phase), and can be accessed at www.photoshop.com/express.  Have fun!