Photoshop Express a Success, Except for the Terms of Service

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Adobe’s new free online photo-sharing service, Photoshop Express, has been generating good reviews from consumers. Except for the part where you agree to sell your soul to the devil for all eternity.

In case you usually skip the terms of service, that is the usually longish, detailed list of terms you’re supposed to read and sign that you agree to before they’ll let you proceed.

Adobe’s terms of agreement include that you will "grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other renumeration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display" your photo content, "in any format or medium now known or later developed."

Perpetual? Irrevocable? In any form that is now in use or hasn’t been developed yet? And they get to claim any compensation, for the rest of time? Yet in the previous paragraph of their terms, it specifically states that by sharing your photos online, Adobe does not claim ownership of your content.

I know you didn’t read the terms of service, so you should be glad that somebody did and took issue with it, and notified the ravenous maw of the media. You’re welcome.

After receiving a number of complaints about the uh, expansive terms, Adobe was quick to respond.

John Nash, the senior product manager for Photoshop, posted on his Adobe blog: "We’ve heard your concerns about the terms of service for Photoshop Express beta," said the statement. "We reviewed the terms in context of your comments - and we agree that it currently implies things we would never do with the content. Therefore, our legal team is making it a priority to post revised terms that are more appropriate for Photoshop Express users."

Reviewers of the product recommend that users either be very careful about which photos they decide to post online, or wait until the terms of service are changed. Many other similar services, like Picnik or Flickr, either claim no rights at all or are much less specific about their potential use of users’ photos.

Other than this not-so-small oversight on the part of Adobe, reviews of Photoshop Express reveal it to be attractive, user-friendly, and fun. There are a nice variety of editing tools as well, allowing users to correct for over- or under-exposure, remove red-eye or other undesirable marks or scars. The photo-sharing feature is easy to use, looks nice, and doesn’t force your friends and family to become registered members in order to look at your photos. Partner sites Facebook, Picasa, and Flickr are all easy to use in conjunction with the program.

As a beta, one should expect some bugs, and they’re there. Consumers complain that verification emails take forever to receive, and some say it just wouldn’t accept their current email addresses. Photos took too long to upload, and final edits could only be saved if the original photo was replaced.

That said, overall consensus was that it had great potential.

Once the part about giving them the rights to your future firstborn child is changed, that is.