Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad and Android tablets
Adobe Photoshop Touch is a new photo editing application for iPad and Android-powered tablets, available from App Store or Google Play for £6.99. With a pretty impressive set of features, and a price tag to match, Photoshop Touch takes amateur photography to the next level. Agent Mike Goulding took the app for a test drive to see if it was worth a purchase.
What is Adobe Photoshop Touch?
Download links:
- Adobe Photoshop Touch for Android-powered tablets (£6.99)
- Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad (£6.99)
When thinking of photo editing at either a professional or amateur level, the first name that comes to most people’s minds is Photoshop.
Adobe’s professional products demand hundreds of pounds of investment to allow you to have the raw power of their products, so how much is this portable tablet version of Photoshop? It’s £6.99, which is expensive in the realm of portable applications on IOS, but in terms of real world use this application dominates its competition. Yes, there are lots of photo enhancing applications available, but not many as intuitive and with the finesse that Photoshop Touch possesses. You’re not going to find all the Photoshop CS6 bells and whistles on an iPad, but what you get is a collection of the greatest features across the last few versions of Photoshop.
There are obviously some limitations with an application such as this, such as maximum picture resolution (1600x1600p) and the inability to handle RAW format images, but there is still so much power in this application that the results you can produce are outstanding.
What is Photoshop Touch like to use?
The initial interface looks quite strange and unfamiliar, but once you get used to the layout it becomes very intuitive and quick to navigate around. In terms of using Photoshop Touch, it has all the core features you would expect from a Photoshop application, such as the Clone Stamp tool, Magic Wand tool and Scribble Selection tool, to name but a few. It supports layers, which makes handling different on-screen elements a breeze. Photo Adjustments give good control of your image, as well a nice selection of effects such as glows, tints and shadows, enabling you to create your own masterpieces. If you have ever wondered about using Photoshop, this is a great place to start, as once you pick up the basics of this application you should be able to apply those skills to Abode Photoshop CS6.
Having used this application for some time, the controls all appear to be in a very logical layout which, whilst challenging at first, is now extremely easy to use. That said, a time investment is required, plus some creative energy, if you want to fully realise what is possible with this app. Once I equipped myself with a stylus, this moved control of the app to the next level and enhanced my precision and accuracy, especially for those tricky moments when your finger keeps getting in the way of what you’re trying to see and do. This may be something for Adobe to look at before the next release, as it can cause some accuracy issues.
Once you get a few layers in your picture with some fancy effects, you can feel the tablet starting to struggle, but it is still usable. This may well be why Adobe drew a line in the sand and capped it at this.
The Image Test
These images look familiar? We do a lot of photography and Photoshop work for the Geek Squad website. As part of a recent project we took some shots of some Agents in our office as part of a welcome banner. We thought we would show you the results of a bit of a play around on the Photoshop Touch app - suffice to say, the Agents look like they're having even more fun in the second image!
Agent verdict
On balance, Adobe Photoshop Touch is a well-featured application offering enough goodies to satisfy your creative urges whilst keeping functionality relatively easy to use and which gives very good results for users of all levels of ability. Much has been said about the limitations that make this application unsuitable on a professional level. This may be true for high resolution image editing, but bear in mind this application is £6.99 and is running on a dual core tablet (iPad), which is not really comparable to a PC or Mac running full CS6. What you get for the minimal financial investment you make is quite remarkable.