So, I went and tried out Adobe's online version of Photoshop, Photoshop Express. It requires the absolute latest version of Flash (my browser wouldn't run it until I upgraded Flash), yet it is so lacking in some really basic features, it shocks me.

I also have a simple image editing program, constructed in Flash, though mine only requires like a 2003 version of Flash to run. Now it doesn't offer a lot of the fancy effects, but that's mainly because it's a drawing program rather than a photo editing program. But the one thing it does is let you draw on a photo. You can draw boxes and various other shapes, then put text in them, so you can add a label or caption to the photo. You can also add clip art, so you can layer on a funny hat and fake moustache.

Now, the thing is that Adobe has been honest that this is a teaser. It's got basic functions to get you to get comfortable with Adobe and then pay $99 to upgrade to Photoshop Elements when you realize how totally dissatisfied you are with the free offering. But between various open source desktop apps (like Inkscape and GIMP), and various web 2.0 photo sharing sites that are adding features all the time... why would you want to upgrade? And aside from a few special effects and tuning bits, I'm not seeing that Adobe is really offering much more than you can find free on the web.

In the end, I'm not the target market for Photoshop Express, but it doesn't look like it's even worth "FREE" because you can find so much more functional stuff for free already. Considering how easy it is to add text on top of photos with Flash and how many fonts Adobe owns, I'm really surprised they're leaving such an essential function out. $99 to write on a photo when you can do it for free with FunDraw or a bevy of other online and offline tools. WTF?

Some of you may recall me griping about how you could only get the latest version of Inkscape compiled for Mac OS/X Leopard with Tiger users left out in the cold. But because these were just development releases and relied on one motivated developer to compile them, we all thought it wouldn't be a big issue. Surely there would be a Tiger user who would compile a DMG package of 0.46 when it was released. Not so much.

Inkscape 0.46 stealth released on March 10 to make some Ubuntu deadlines, then officially announced the release yesterday (March 24) on inkscape.org. So far, there are binaries for Ubuntu and Mac OS/X Leopard, but if you're on Fedora, Debian, OS/X Tiger, or Windows, you're left to compile it yourself or continue to wait.

According to an insider part of this is due to the fact that Inkscape wasn't really ready to release across all platforms. There was a major printing bug in the Windows version, but if they didn't release now, they'd be locked out of the next version of Ubuntu and have to wait 6 months.

So, for all of you who have been anxiously awaiting Inkscape 0.46 and are not Ubuntu or Leopard users, or have the technical skills to compile it yourself (I tried for Tiger, following Jiho's fairly detailed instructions, but kept running up against issues that would wait until an hour into the compile to obtusely rear their ugly heads), it's not really released. It's just reached another milestone on its way to an eventual stable binary release for your platform.

Perhaps that's why, despite the announcement saying 0.46 has been released, the inkscape.org site stills says that 0.45.1 is the latest stable version. Ahwell.