As Adobe Photoshop is the most popular photography software, the company hopes to obtain the same success with an online version of the program.

Adobe announced on Thursday the launching of a less complex, free online version of its image-editing software.

Called Photoshop Express, the new service aims to attract new, mainstream users, who will be able to upload, store and edit their digital photographs through a browser, not needing to download any software on their computer.   

After registering for an account, users get 2GB of free storage space. Still, there are competitor sites that offer unlimited storage. Another feature that may make the service popular is the link with social networking sites designed especially for image sharing, such as Facebook or Photobucket.

The service will be launched in beta test mode on Thursday and the company will expect to get feedback from customers, to see what they need to change and improve.

In a press release, Adobe Systems Incorporated offers a detailed description of Photoshop Express. Apparently, no experience is needed to use the service. The users will have easy access to simple features such as removing blemishes, cropping or resizing a photo, removing red-eye effect, convert to black and white, or distort facial features to obtain funny effects. The service will reportedly allow more sophisticated edits of the images than the other similar sites do.

Photoshop Express will compete with similar services such as Picnik, Phixr or Splashup and other online editing photo services. But Adobe’s service will certainly benefit from its consecrated brand name.

In the future, the company plans to offer Adobe Photoshop Express also as a desktop application.