Adobe is discontinuing its Photoshop.com storage and sharing website and replacing it with the company's Adobe Revel cloud photo service. Adobe plans to move subscriber images stored at Photoshop.com to its Revel site in an automated process that will start on April 2 and end on June 18. This is part of a strategy to transition Photoshop.com from a photo service to an informational and resource Website. This transition will also affect Photoshop Express and Photoshop Elements subscribers in the U.S. and worldwide.
Photoshop.com is a Web/cloud service that allows users to store and back up your media in the cloud and take advantage of content on the site. Adobe integrated Photoshop.com with Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Express to give those customers a way to store, share, and access their photos while they were away from their desktop. Adobe also integrated the Photoshop.com service with the mobile version of Photoshop Express so those users could access their complete library.
Adobe Revel, originally called Carousel, is an easy-to-use mobile image editor that combos as a photo shooting, sharing, and syncing tool, and lets you automatically back up, store, and share your photo collection via the cloud. Revel is new technology that enables stored content to be viewed across multiple devices simultaneously.
Now, Adobe is consolidating user images from Photoshop.com (which included Photoshop Express and Photoshop Elements subscriptions) into the Revel space.Photoshop Elements 11 is already integrated with Revel.
Revel built for mobile
The Adobe Revel photo hosting service is accessible via a free photo app for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. You can organize photos using albums, tags, and captions, crop photos, and apply filters. You can share photo albums privately on the Revel website or via various social networks. Everything in Revel is automatically synced across all your devices. You can use Adobe Revel from a Web browser to view, upload, and download files.
JPEGs only
A notable aspect of Revel app today is that it only supports the JPEG format. That means if you have stored video or Raw images on the Photoshop.com site, you will have to use Adobe’s Media Downloader to archive those files before the move. Photoshop.com supports a wide variety of cross platform image and video file formats, including JPEG, DNG, PNG, PSD, RAW, TIFF, MP4, MPEG, MOV, and many others.
Adobe is aware that some people will want to work with video and images in other formats and says it intends to make Revel compatible with additional file formats in future versions, but does not offer a specific timetable.
All Photoshop.com members in the U.S. will be automatically enrolled as Revel members and be able to access their photos via their existing Photoshop.com ID. The Revel service will preserve photos and album structure; Web galleries will become albums in Revel; and current album links will continue to work. Group albums will not be moved, but the JPEG photos in those albums will be moved to Revel. Photoshop.com contacts and friend lists are not supported in Revel.
While U.S.-based subscriptions will move automatically, members outside the U.S. will have to notify Adobe if they want their photos moved to Revel and must use the migration page to initiate the move. If you don’t want your photos transferred to the Revel site, you can choose to opt out of the service and remove your files from the server with the media downloader. If you do not act to save incompatible assets to your hard drive (all other formats except JPEGs), they will not be accessible after the move is completed, Adobe says.
Subscribers who have a paid Photoshop.com plan will automatically get a Revel Premium subscription free of charge for a year.
Windows on the horizon
While there's no native Windows or Android compatibility for Revel yet, Adobe has taken non-Mac and non-iOS users into account with an Android importer, available on Google Play, that lets you bring photos shot with an Android device into Revel.
According to an Adobe blog, "This is just the beginning—in the coming months, the company plans to address customer requests and expand onto new platforms, devices, and file formats."
Revel pricing
While Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements 11 did not offer Elements subscriptions because that version's sharing and syncing function was already hooked into Revel, earlier versions of those programs did have subscription options, and those members (with Elements versions 7-10) will also be transferred to the Revel service.
Adobe Revel's price structure offers unlimited importing of photos for the first 30 days free of charge. Thereafter, the free account allows you to upload 50 photos per month. A Premium account allows unlimited photo upload for $6 per month. The desktop and mobile apps are all free.
More details are available on Adobe's website about how various plans will be implemented for different versions of Elements subscriptions, and for paid and free subscribers to Photoshop.com. Adobe also has a detailed FAQ explaining how the transfer will be handled under most circumstances.
