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.

Adobe to take Photoshop online from News.com

Photoshop online? It's a very interesting prospect. Does it mean doom for upstarts like Picnik? Possibly since the Photoshop online service is going to be free. Though will the online Photoshop be too bloated with features to work quickly and easily online or be so powerful that it's overwhelming for new and low tech users? A better question is perhaps what does this mean for Google's Picassa? Does the Photoshop brand identity give Adobe the automatic leapfrog effect over Picassa? It will really depend on who Adobe is hoping to target. In any case it's a boost to photographers for there to be good competition in this arena and it's going to be fun to watch developments.

via Webware