Adobe’s creative suite is still largely unmatched in professional environments, but the competition doesn’t sleep. Consumers and prosumers are increasingly walking away from the expensive subscription-based Adobe services, with many capable alternatives cropping up. In particular, there are some great web-based options out there, and now, Adobe is finally reacting by moving to a freemium model for Photoshop on the web.

As covered by The Verge, Adobe announced during a consumer event in Paris that it will experiment with moving to a freemium model for Photoshop on the web. The test will first come to Canadian users, who will be able to use Photoshop for web for free. In the long term, the company wants to move away from free users, making them only available to paid subscribers, but it should be possible to use basic Photoshop features for free. To get started, you still need to sign up for a free Adobe account, though.

There is no timeline on when the free model will launch more widely. In any case, Adobe is hard at work improving the Photoshop app for the web with more and better features. We should expect better refine edge and curves tools and enhancements to doge and burn. it will additionally be possible to convert Smart Objects in the future. In the collaborative department, the app will also receive support for reviewing and commenting on projects.

Photoshop on the web is available on Adobe's Creative Cloud website. It's currently officially still in beta.

The move is a reaction to the increasingly web-based nature of productivity. Many workflows have moved to the browser entirely, with cloud-first operating systems like Chrome OS encouraging this even further. In fact, Adobe’s Photoshop software wasn’t really available in a first-class capacity on Chromebooks before the company released Photoshop for the web in late 2021, at least if we discard the more limited Photoshop Express Android app.