Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad expected to hit App Store Monday for $9.99

Posted:
in iPad edited January 2014


Adobe's new Photoshop Touch for iPad 2 was briefly and accidentally made available on the App Store this weekend, but the software is expected to officially launch for $9.99 on Monday.



The software was briefly available for purchase on the App Store before it was pulled, but it is expected to have an official, formal launch on Monday. Adobe Photoshop Touch will not be compatible with Apple's first-generation iPad, leaving access to only iPad 2 owners.



The full list of featured advertised for Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad is:



Use popular Photoshop features designed for the tablet such as layers, selection tools, adjustments, and filters to create mind-blowing images.



Use your iPad camera to fill an area on a layer with the unique camera fill feature.



Select part of an image to extract by scribbling with the Scribble Selection tool. With Refine Edge, use your fingertip to capture even hard-to-select image elements, like hair, with ease.



Search and acquire images with the integrated Google Image Search.



Share images on Facebook and view comments right within the app.










Browse an inspirational gallery for the styles and results you'd like to achieve. Then follow step-by-step tutorials to easily learn techniques the pros use for great-looking results.



Use AirPrint for wireless printing of Photoshop Touch projects.



Upload projects to Adobe Creative Cloud* and open layered files from Adobe Photoshop Touch in Photoshop CS5.



Maximum image resolution: 1600 x 1600 pixels











Before it was pulled from the App Store, developer Steve Troughton-Smith downloaded the application and offered his hands-on impressions on Twitter. He noted that Photoshop is written through Adobe's AIR programming language, explaining why it requires more processing power from the iPad 2.



"Photoshop Touch is not a bad app at all," he wrote. "It's rather good. Can't help to think it could have been so much better without AIR."



Last May, Adobe debuted a trio of Photoshop companion applications that allow users to control the desktop version of the photo editing software on their iPad. But Photoshop Touch, which launched on Android tablets late last year, is a separate application from the desktop version.



[ View article on AppleInsider ]

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    He noted that Photoshop is written through Adobe's AIR programming language, explaining why it requires more processing power from the iPad 2.



    Ah, so if Adobe weren't a bunch of lazy morons, they could have sold it to even more people. Got it.
  • Reply 2 of 77
    pokepoke Posts: 506member
    AIR also explains the ugly, non-standard UI.
  • Reply 3 of 77
    Those pictures look awesome... I wonder if they were edited entirely on the iPad.



    Someone should make a good pen and scribbling app for the iPad for the people who want it, and then with these sorts of programs other tablets would have nothing to lord over Apple anymore.
  • Reply 4 of 77
    It's too bad they used AIR, it could have brought Adobe back to the front of photo editing, but it seems that most companies just can't step out of the mud once they step into it.
  • Reply 5 of 77
    Isn't AIR just a native platform runtime environment for Flash?
  • Reply 6 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    Adobe's new Photoshop Touch for iPad 2 was briefly and accidentally made available on the App Store this weekend, but the software is expected to officially launch for $9.99 on Monday. ...



    It's great that they are (trying) to support the iOS platform, but this is hardly "Photoshop." I guess they are calling it that to play on the brand recognition, but this is barely above the level of a program like Instagram.



    Also, typical of Adobe, it ties into all it's online sales properties, it's polluted with DRM, and is both slow and limited in the images it can process. They also have managed to make the much more limited functionality of this program more complicated and confusing than it needs to be (three separate buttons with three separate menus which all amount to "apply this filter/effect").



    You can also see from the demo videos they supply that the programmers at Adobe are really, really old-school guys that don't really understand "all this touch stuff" at all. The geezer designer poking at it with his stylus in the demo video is a veritable laugh-fest. He uses the stylus like he's poking at a piece of dog poo and fails to select menus multiple times.



    There is an SNL parody video just waiting to be made of that one.
  • Reply 7 of 77
    mauszmausz Posts: 243member
    Now if only the ipad3 would get a wacom active digitizer instead of a simple capacative touchscreen..
  • Reply 8 of 77
    Limited to 1600 px!? They can't be serious. There is better software out there.
  • Reply 9 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by LighteningKid View Post


    Someone should make a good pen and scribbling app for the iPad for the people who want it, and then with these sorts of programs other tablets would have nothing to lord over Apple anymore.



    That won't happen until gets behind it. You can buy capacitance pens right now and while they have better accuracy than a finger it's not good enough for professional use. The capacitance touchscreen matrix simply isn't designed for anything other than your fingers. However, as shown by several tests Apple's capacitance touchscreens work the best.



    If you want to do professional work you need the proper equipment. That means a Wacom digitizer built into the touchscreen along with a capacitance touchscreen. This gives you the option to use your fingers and the nifty styli with buttons that can change the point, color, brush, etc.



    Samsung is the first commercial product with the Galaxy Note line that I know of that offers the best of both. They've even created APIs. The problem is that it's still a Android and it's still version 2.3 making it much less useful as a standard tablet. I hope Apple does get onboard with the digitizer but I don't think we've heard any such rumours at this point.
  • Reply 10 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by toysandme View Post


    Limited to 1600 px!? They can't be serious. There is better software out there.



    That does seem low. Hopefully that changes with the iPad 3.
  • Reply 11 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mausz View Post


    Now if only the ipad3 would get a wacom active digitizer instead of a simple capacative touchscreen..



    The iPad 3 is kind of like a "2s" revision. The iPad 4 is the next time we might see real changes.



    I too hope they put in a digitiser for styluses soon. It's so hard to explain to non-artists that yes, the iPad has a stylus you can get for it, and yes you *can* draw with it, but no, it's not a "real" stylus that you can "really" draw with.



    I'm certain that styluses are coming eventually. Your stylus will likely end up being your ID in fact as the tablets of the future will need to know who's stylus it is signing that digital document and stealing someone's pen will likely amount to being able to sign documents in their name.



    I hope it's an iPad 4 thing as I don't want to wait until iPad 6 for such basic functionality.
  • Reply 12 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mausz View Post


    Now if only the ipad3 would get a wacom active digitizer instead of a simple capacative touchscreen..



    ...they could disappoint a majority of their users and thrill a minority.

    (finished for you )
  • Reply 13 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Doctor David View Post


    ...they could disappoint a majority of their users and thrill a minority.

    (finished for you )



    I do agree that eventually it will likely be advantageous to add this feature even if not used my most. Of course, those who hate Apple will say that Samsung had it first and that Apple is just copying them but they won't realize that Apple will add it to the entire line not just one product in a category.



    I do wonder about power usage and color accuracy when including the digitizer. Doesn't the backlight have to pass through the digitizer for it to work?
  • Reply 14 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    If you want to do professional work you need the proper equipment.



    Exactly. And like it or not, the iPad isn't designed to be a 'pro' tablet. Like basically everything else Apple has in their bag of tricks it is a consumer idea with prosumer friendly features. But the decision about what to include is always guided by the benefits to the consumer, especially if the idea is costly. Apple is in the business of making money and thus anything that cuts into their profit margin more than a few dollars is going to raise the price. If that increase doesn't come with something that consumers would really want or use then it won't happen.



    Consumers don't need a screen fine enough to use a needle point sized stylus and the cost of such a screen is likely very high at this point, so we don't get that kind of screen. Sure you can say make a pro version but how many folks would really buy it compared to the consumer one. Probably not enough in Apple's mind to justify the effort. Given the pro artists etc out there crowing on their twitter feeds about their iPad 2 being totally awesome, it's hard not to think that Apple is correct.



    Apple put their 300+dpi retina display on the iPhone 4 but why not the iPad 2. There has to be a reason for not doing that. Cost, battery life, brightness etc. perhaps all 3 and even something else. Perhaps now those issues are resolved and certainly the last one (brightness) would have a benefit to the consumers that they can readily see. If there is no change in cost or battery use or the changes are 'positive' of course Apple will do it.



    And so on



    The biggest thing that many folks need is to get over thinking of Apple as a pro focused company. They were once and that kept them afloat for a while but lets face it, that era is long gone. Apple is in the business of making lots of money just like all the other companies and the consumer market is the place to do that. So that is where they are and where they will stay.
  • Reply 15 of 77
    The limitation of 1600 pixels tells me that they're serious about not supporting serious photographers.



    While there's no mention of supported formats that I could find, that size eliminates any RAW images. Given that, I doubt that there'll be support for 16-bit images in either psd or tif format. In fact, I doubt that it'll handle any format other than jpg. Also, 1600 pixels is 5.33 inches if printed at 300 pixels/inch. My conclusions are that it's designed for the 90% of photographers who take flash photos from nosebleed seats at nighttime games, who only want to share photos via e-mail or on a web site and who don't care about the loss of detail in shadow areas that's a part of the jpg format.



    So if you're not part of the target market, quit whining and start saving for Photoshop CS 6, due in less than six months.
  • Reply 16 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by charlituna View Post


    Apple put their 300+dpi retina display on the iPhone 4 but why not the iPad 2. There has to be a reason for not doing that. Cost, battery life, brightness etc. perhaps all 3 and even something else. Perhaps now those issues are resolved and certainly the last one (brightness) would have a benefit to the consumers that they can readily see. If there is no change in cost or battery use or the changes are 'positive' of course Apple will do it.



    I can't prove it but it looks to me that Apple used LG's AH-IPS display tech for the iPhone 4 in 2010. Now this tech doesn't look to be officially available until 2011



    It's also slated to be on larger devices with 1.5 to 2x the resolution and Apple reportedly investd $3.9 billion in display tech in 2011 for upcoming projects. I think that points to the HiDPI iPad display.



    Now the beauty of this display isn't just the pixels per inch but that it allows the displays to be less expensive -and- use lower power backlights than previous IPS panels. According to Wikipedia. "Improved colour accuracy, increased resolution and PPI, and greater light transmission for lower power consumption."
  • Reply 17 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    I do agree that eventually it will likely be advantageous to add this feature even if not used my most. Of course, those who hate Apple will say that Samsung had it first and that Apple is just copying them but they won't realize that Apple will add it to the entire line not just one product in a category.



    I do wonder about power usage and color accuracy when including the digitizer. Doesn't the backlight have to pass through the digitizer for it to work?



    I have to admit my comment wasn't very forward thinking. I hadn't considered that they could add a digitizer to their current touch tech. I thought it was more like one or the other, but what I don't know on the topic could fill many books. If they can add it seamlessly that would be great, I have friends that love those things.
  • Reply 18 of 77
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    Isn't AIR just a native platform runtime environment for Flash?



    According to wiki:



    Quote:

    Adobe AIR internally uses Adobe Flash Player as the runtime environment, and ActionScript 3 as the sole programming language. Flash applications must specifically be built for the Adobe AIR runtime in order to utilize additional features provided, such as file system integration, native client extensions, native window/screen integration, taskbar/dock integration, and hardware integration with connected Accelerometer and GPS devices.[4] AIR enables applications to work with data in multiple different ways, including local files, local SQLite databases for which AIR has inbuilt support, a database server via web services, or the encrypted local store included with AIR.





    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_AIR





    I wonder why Apple allows AIR on iOS, yet disallows Flash on iOS.

  • Reply 19 of 77
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Had a program with exactly these features, ease of use and power been released by Apple it would have been instantly hailed as the Photoshop killer by the regular Adobe haters around here.
  • Reply 20 of 77
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post


    I wonder why Apple allows AIR on iOS, yet disallows Flash on iOS.



    I don't think it is Air exactly. It is probably iOS packager for Flash which exports pure native iOS api functionality.
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