Photoshop Express for Windows Phone adds capabilities

  • Published on April 17, 2015
Photoshop Express for Windows Phone adds capabilities

Photoshop Express is Adobe’s effort to provide basic digital image editing capabilities on the phone. It is a free app available for most major phone platforms. As more photos are captured on phones, and shared using services such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, Adobe is struggling to make Photoshop relevant for the average consumer. Photoshop remains the go-to tool for designers, marketing professionals, and others in creative fields. But general users who casually take and share photos often accept photos as-is, use integrated filters on their phones, or use tools other than Photoshop for any edits that are created. Photoshop is stuck at the high-end of the market, and with Photoshop Express, Adobe is working to make the brand useful for average photographers who aren’t professional designers.

Adobe continues this effort with a recent release of an update to the Adobe Photoshop Express app for Windows Phone. This Photoshop app provides only a small section of the editing options available in the full version of Photoshop that operates on desktop and notebook computers. This update to the mobile version of Photoshop Express can be used to remove fog or haze that clouds an image, or increase the color intensity of images. While Photoshop Express is a free app in the Windows Phone store, these new capabilities may eventually require an in-app purchase, as they aren’t part of the original Photoshop Express.

Adobe has indicated that the new capabilities, such as the defog function, as well as a noise reduction function, may eventually require an additional payment to access. But for now, Adobe is making them available at no cost for users of the Photoshop Express for Windows Phone.

These capabilities are in addition to the Photoshop Express features that can be used to perform basic edits such as straightening, cropping, and rotating images, as well as remove red-eye. Color and tone adjustments are also included, such as adjustments for brightness, exposure, contrast and clarity within this pared-down version of Photoshop. Don’t expect to find layers, text, effects, or filters – this is a pared-down, free Photoshop for use on handheld devices. You’ll find that Photoshop training is not a requirement for working with the pared-down mobile version of the app. Photoshop Express is a useful tool for quick image fixes, and the free additional capabilities for Windows Phone users make it a sensible choice for image editing if you are a Windows Phone user.

About the author

 is a user experience designer, Photoshop expert, educator and author based in Boston. She is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices.

Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern Windows UX Design, having worked closely with the Windows team to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally on behalf of Microsoft. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Blend for Visual Studio, XD, and Balsamiq. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.