Adobe Considers Possibilities for iPhone and iPad Integration With Photoshop

[MacRumors]

For several months, Adobe has been thinking about how it can involve the iPad and other tablet devices in the workflows of Photoshop users, asking users for feedback on what sorts of capabilities they might like to see.

Demo of color-mixing palette tool on iPad
Building on that feedback, the company has now taken its first steps in that direction, as evidenced by a pair of brief demos at last week's Adobe MAX conference in which Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch showed off the company's content-aware fill tool running on a Samsung Galaxy Tab and a color-mixing paint palette application running on an iPad.

Mockup of Photoshop tools on iPad
Adobe's John Nack has also noted that the company's designers have begun mocking up other tools that could allow the iPhone and iPad to serve as extensions of Photoshop running on a desktop or notebook computer.

In a nutshell, you get:

- groups of task-based tools & commands (e.g. all your photography/retouching tools & buttons on one page, or all your painting ones, 3D ones, etc.)
- interactive, task-based tutorials that drive Photoshop, helping you get things done

Among the ideas presented in a PDF summary of the team's efforts are custom toolsets accessible by tapping on a companion iPhone application, tutorials with tool accelerators to help quickly walk users through certain tasks, and companion iPad applications housing many of the commonly-used tools for easy access while also allowing for limited image editing (such as liquifying, painting, and drawing) using the multi-touch interface.

Mockup of Photoshop toolset on iPhone
All of these latter concepts appear to simply be mockups at this point, but Adobe is clearly thinking about how best to take advantage of multi-touch functionality to enhance the Photoshop's functionality without attempting to replicate a full Photoshop experience directly on the touch device without the precision and power available on a traditional desktop or notebook.

Article Link: Adobe Considers Possibilities for iPhone and iPad Integration With Photoshop

 

[grimmace]

Nice

I think that would be fantastic just to have as an illustration tool. I'd love to do photo retouch on an ipad. May need a stylus pen though. This is a great addition and I hope they do well with it.

 

[CrackedButter]

The best bit is...

Adobe will have written entirely new code. No legacy crap or UI carry overs from windows.

 

[Don Kosak]

I don't think they intend to port all of photoshop to the iPad.

I think what they are doing here is moving a lot of the UI onto the iPad.

Instead of your screen being filled with a half dozen tool palettes, you can move a bunch of those onto your iPad freeing up your main screen for your illustration work.

 

[Slix]

Looks good. I can't wait. The current PS Express on the iPhone isn't really that useful.

 

[iWonderwhy]

I wonder how much they'll charge.

 

[Michael73]

You'd think that they could use pen tablets which they have years of experience supporting as a baseline for how users might want to interact with the entire CS suite. In fact, I'd think Illustrator is a prime candidate for a iPad version, too.

 

[nwcs]

It certainly looks intriguing but it would not be the tool of choice for photographers or designers for quite a while. Still, I like the direction they're thinking and there clearly is some potential here.

 

[*LTD*]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117)

Funny to see how Apple makes Adobe jump. Nice to see Shantanu Narayen accepting the Apple reality rather than fighting it.

 

[Don Kosak]

If you read closely, they're talking about "extending" Photoshop running on your desktop by letting you use your iPhone/iPad as a kind of touch pad remote control.

This is not about running Photoshop or Illustrator on iPad or iPhone.

So, for instance, you could mix paint colors on your iPad -- but drawing would still be done on your desktop.

You could flick your "Layers" menu onto your iPhone -- to free up screen space on your desktop. The Menu would be on your iPhone, but the drawing itself would stay on your desktop (or Laptop) running Mac OS X Photoshop.

 

[Piggie]

Fantastic.

However it shows up the current iPad screens shortcomings.

Too small, Too low res and chunky finger painting.

I wait for the day you can use a OPTIONAL stylus and run a proper paint program for retouching and painting on a Tablet device.

 

[Winni]

I'm afraid you guys aren't getting it. Adobe is NOT porting Photoshop or any part of it to the iPad. They are just using the iPad as an input device for Photoshop that is still running on a PC or a Mac. Nothing more, nothing less.

The iPad has little real world uses, but for something like this, the iPad might actually make sense.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

Adobe will have written entirely new code. No legacy crap or UI carry overs from windows.

That UI is particularly helpful for people using Photoshop across multiple platforms. Even if my students don't understand OSX, I can teach them Photoshop on a Mac and they can go home and be able to jump directly into where we were with their Windows system. The OS doesn't interfere or change the program's experience too dramatically.

Regarding this, it's great to see Adobe considering an extension of their fantastic software into this realm. Seeing someone draw with their finger on an iPad still reminds me of finger painting (aka, children's summer camp process) but it's a start, I suppose. If Apple added stylus support, I could actually use my iPad for a functional purpose and let it take the place of a Cintiq.

 

[FFArchitect]

Very exciting. More moves to blur the line between laptops and tablets.

 

[BornToMac]

This is indeed awesome if it goes anywhere. There is so much opportunity here.

 

[Analog Kid]

Wow, Adobe retains the capacity to innovate? Maybe there's hope for them after all...

I like the concepts I'm seeing, but one things they'll need to contend with is that a second display means a second color calibration.

 

[highdough]

The iPad has little real world uses, but for something like this, the iPad might actually make sense.

Yes, but they do have a lot of fake world uses.

 

[Mochi Hana]

The article makes it seem like that this isn't Photoshop being ported to the iPhone but something created to run in tandem with the app on your computer. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting right though.

 

[jeznav]

iPad needs 4GB to run Photoshop. /s

 

[bronksy]

Great. Now MAKE IT WORK WITH APERTURE

somehow- just let me use it as a live tether to my camera - let me use it with Aperture (or a lite version) so I can sit and sort my images and save hours of time when I get back to base..

There are thousands of Photogs out there screaming for some killer photo app to make the ipad THE tool to have if you are a pro 'tog..

 

[NicoleRichie]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I am curious to see how it will function. UI and all...

 

[velocityg4]

I'm afraid you guys aren't getting it. Adobe is NOT porting Photoshop or any part of it to the iPad. They are just using the iPad as an input device for Photoshop that is still running on a PC or a Mac. Nothing more, nothing less.

The iPad has little real world uses, but for something like this, the iPad might actually make sense.

Though it does seem as though it could be a useful extension of Photoshop. I do wonder what they will do about color calibration. Other choosing colors and custom mixing paints become useless if the color does not come out the same on your calibrated display.

I could also see them making something along the lines of a Photoshop lite or Photoshop elements. Heck just bring all the features of a full fledged version that ran great on a G3 with 256MB RAM, say 6.0 or 5 even.

 

[PsudoPowerPoint]

I'd buy it.

 

[blackpond]

The tip of the iceberg, really. The iPad or any other portable touch device used as an input device for more powerful machines. Combined with ad-hoc wifi connections, rfid chips etc... there is a looming paradigm shift with how we interact with desktops on the horizon.

 

[dakwar]

I like the direction they're going with this. Keep up the good work, Adobe!