I've played with a lot of Flash applications, hell, I've written a TON of them. I was one of the very few developers developing/integrating PHP/MySQL/Flash 5/MX/ActionScript programming that I know of at the time. Here's a few links to some of them I built that are still online.

• Brad B ECard
• Scarub Online Media One Sheet
• Die Young Online Media One Sheet (looks like the music is broken for some reason)

Unfortunately the Internet archive doesn't keep track of flash movies that well otherwise I'd link the SUPER COOL ones (tons of animation based upon user input and data from the persistence store) I did that had TONS of integration. I had a ton of other ones that I've done but either the band or label went under so they're not online and I don't have a portfolio site for them (although I should for historical purposes). Between my stints at Lava Records, Atlantic Records, Dreamworks Records, Nitro Records and the now defunct Grave 9 Records I wrote a lot of PHP/MySQL and Actionscript. Thank god those days are over. Oh .NET how I love thee... anyway... enough geek talk.

Why The Best Ever?

One of my favorite hip-hop artists, Atmosphere, released a new album called "When Life Gives You Lemons" (You Paint That Sh!t Gold). Seriously, its a great album, but this isn't a music review site - its a technology blog so lets back to topic Felker ...

With the release of this album they released a web app that allows users to "Tag The World" (www.paintitgold.com) which in effect lets the user take a screen capture (through the use of a Flash App) by typing in a URL and then you can use a set of tools to tag up the site of your choice.

You can use spray paint, stencils, different colors, sizes, markers, etc, its cool. I literally lost about 2 hours on this site. I got sucked in this evening. That NEVER happens, so when it does I'm completely amazed at how the site did it. After being on the net for 10+ years I thought I'd seen it all, NOPE. This is cool. I've seen some "Paint" sites before, but this one got me sucked in.  The other sites that implemented the "paint" feature were very MSPaint. Lets face it, MSPaint, well... sucks. Its great to grab screen shots, but then again, why aren't you using Paint.NET?

Anyway, that aside here's what I did to my site. Honestly, I must have created over 50 of these before I just said screw it and decided to save it for the heck of it.

(click the image to see a larger version on the actual site)

The real awesome-ness is that the spray paint has pressure, and you can size the stencils, rotate them, and just go crazy in general. Afterwards,  you can submit your "masterpiece" (if you want to call it that - mine definitely is ... look at my new digs on my picture above - *haha*) to a gallery on the site. Afterwards it gives you code to post your masterpiece on your blog (which is how I got it to my site).

Conclusion

Take a look at how simple it is to use this site.

I mean it, literally look at how easy it is to use. You don’t have to be a computer genius to get it to work. It just works. This site has a GREAT UX and its fun as hell. There is music playing in the background. You get to tag up a site, hell, just have fun, and you can save your drawing in the end. Every single Web 2.0 designer that wants to make a fun compelling app can learn something from this site. The saying goes "Don't Make Me Think". Not only did this site NOT make me think, it led my hand to allow me to escape into their site (and literally escape reality for a couple of hours).

The only thing I wish they had was a "undo" feature that worked as I expected. From what I could find it you could only "clear the canvas" ... but... then again... this is a hip hop site and the hip hop culture embraces graffiti, and in a true blank canvas sort of way this site embraces the graffiti element beautifully. In the real world you can't just "undo" a line of paint on a wall (or train for that matter). :) You have to keep on going whether you like the piece or not. Its art. :)

Final Thoughts

Kudos to the developers of this site, great job guys.

Heuer lets create a version in Silverlight that blows this one out of the water. :)

Almost daily, I use some sort of digital editing program. Over the years my top 5 tools for digital editing have been Paint.NET and Photoshop. I use both programs daily for editing screen shots, creating educational material/training manuals, and blog posts. I love Paint.NET simply for the fact that its VERY quick to load and performs easy tasks quite quickly. On my machine Paint.NET is up and running in under 5 seconds. Paint.NET helped get the easy tasks done, but when I wanted to perform true graphics manipulation and do some hardcore stuff, I'd fire up Photoshop. The one thing that always crossed my mind was why Adobe did not offer a "Photoshop Lite" type of program. Paint.NET has always been my "Photoshop Lite" since it was released. But, I still wondered why Adobe was missing out on this market.

Well, the other day Adobe released Photoshop Express. With my previous pondering finally answered, I HAD TO check out this product from Adobe. Could this be the "Photoshop Lite" I was hoping for?

My First False Assumption

My first initial impression upon reading the product SKU name "Photoshop Express" was that it was going to be a slimmed down version of Photoshop similar to Paint.NET that was installable. Having worked with Visual Studio for a very long time, I've become adjusted to recommending the "Express" SKU's to developers interested in .NET development. I'd recommend the Visual Studio Express SKU because it allowed them to get the feel for a good IDE (slimmed down on features of course) but they still got to use a lot of built in functionality, and it was FREE. That was the nice thing (note: if you're a student you can utilize the Dreamspark campaign to get a free version of Visual Studio Pro, and other products).

Was this the slimmed down version? No... not at all. Not only was this version not slimmed down, it wasn't even installable - its a pure browser based solution. I was thinking that maybe it was a "Click Once" app, nope. Not even close. This is purely a browser based solution. Ok, that's not too bad, then I started to use it...

My Second False Assumption

I believe a company of Adobe's caliber would be able to create a compelling graphics app that would be very responsive and effective - regardless of the platform (install or web). Anyone who has worked with any graphics program knows that they are memory hogs. Literally, they eat memory for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner (and some snacks between). They need to utilize a vast memory base to keep the program responsive - I like to say - if its a' swappin' it's a' doggin'. I had assumed that this program would be snappy like its big brother Photoshop. Nope. Not at all.

Since Photoshop Express is a web based hosted solution the images have to be uploaded to the server. The problem lies in the last four words of that sentence. Uploaded to the server. I don't know about you, but there is nothing snappy about loading up a 2MB file to a web site. Applying the filters are rudimentary, adjusting contrast, color balance and other tasks leave your image looking like you took a trip back to hippyville with too many pink elephants.

Conclusion

I had assumed I might be able to replace Paint.NET with Photoshop Express upon its initial release. Unfortunately Photoshop Express is insanely slow and the graphic manipulation tools that I need to accomplish my tasks are not what I need them to be. The lack of options are kind of a bummer and the responsiveness of the app is less than lackluster. But I'll say this... its a good attempt. Maybe version 2.x will be better.

How could Adobe get me to use the app? They could make it a Click-Once app. Make it a local installation. Follow the Visual Studio Express SKU model. Look at Paint.NET, It's worked great for them, why wouldn't it work for Adobe? I know they have a ginormous Apple following so they'd have to use a installation procedure that would work with MAC's as well as Windows. Possibly supporting two different models of the software is just too much for them at this point to foot the bill for a Free product and support. But, if they did go down the route of an installable Express type of app, I'd be all over it.

For the meantime I'll be sticking with Paint.NET. It's installable. Its a subset of Photoshop Features, and the real key is... ITS FAST. Any tool that I use MUST BE FAST. If its not, its gone.

Click thumbs for larger image

Screenshot of Paint.NET	Screenshot of Photoshop Express