Adobe Photoshop Touch iPad App Review

Features
Performance
Verdict



Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad offers core features of Photoshop in an app designed for the iPad. You can combine images, apply professional effects, share results with friends and family through  Facebook and more. The app is available now for £6.99.

Adobe Photoshop Touch For iPad Features

• Use layers, selection tools, adjustments and filters
• Use your iPad camera to fill an area on a layer with the 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
• Integrated Google Image Search
• Share images on Facebook and view comments
• Browse an inspirational gallery for the styles and results you'd like to achieve
• Follow step-by-step tutorials to learn techniques the pros use
• Use AirPrint for wireless printing
• Upload projects to Adobe Creative Cloud and open layered files in Photoshop CS5
• Maximum image resolution 1600 x 1600 pixels

Adobe Photoshop Touch For iPad Performance

The app has a clear and fairly easy to use interface and there is just so much which can be acheived. Users who are familiar with Photoshop will find the app easy to settle into, with the main restriction being the limited image size output of 1600 x 1600 pixels but it does work with raw files. It is well worth trying some of the tutorials to get a good feel of how the app works. Each one has an example which you can perform the instructions on as you go through.

Images can be added from local photos, Creative Cloud, camera, Google and Facebook. You save your work as projects which can be sorted into folders and also duplicated. Saving can then be performed one project or several in one go as either JPEGS or PNGS and saved to your camera roll. They can also be emailed, printed, uploaded to Facebook or Creative Cloud.

When working on a project you can create layers, these are in the right hand tool bar. Down the left are the selection, paint, clone stamp, eraser and blur tools. Along the top are a number of other tools such as select pixels, inverse, feather, crop, adjustments (black and white, saturation, auto fix, brightness/contrast, temperature, replace colour, shadows/highlights, colour balance, reduce noise, invert, levels, curves), effects, fill & stroke, add text, add gradient, add fade, warp and more.

Here are a few examples of images which have been edited with the app.

Before		After

Adobe Photoshop Touch For iPad Verdict

There are many apps out there which can perform certain tasks and add effects to images which are ideal for beginners as they are simple to use. The Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad app brings all these together and much, much more, with it well suited for photographers.

Our IT manager, David Burleson, uses Photoshop primarily for graphic design and found the app to be a good starting point for a fully-blown photoshop app. Most of the features are catered to photo editing, not graphic design. In particular, he would like to see Layer Styles available.

Nikita Morris, our Features Writer said: "Once you start playing with this app you soon realise why it's well-worth having a look at. The basic editing tools of Photoshop are there, plus built in filters and editing options for those who are looking for a quick fix. I only spent a few minutes making changes to a portrait and the editing process was quick, easy and produced pleasing results. Having the Layers system available is a nice touch too."

The price represents extremely good value for money, given how much the app can do and hopefully future versions on future iPads will allow the output of full sized images, rather than being restricted to 1600 x 1600 pixels as well as provide more features, tools and options to match what is available in Photoshop.

The Adobe Photoshop Touch For iPad is feature rich and extremely good value for money.

Adobe Photoshop Touch For iPad Pros

Feature packed
Extremely good value for money
Easy to use
Uncluttered interface

Adobe Photoshop Touch For iPad Cons

Maximum image size of 1600 x 1600 pixels
New comers to Photoshop may find it overwhelming
Can't use on iPad 1

FEATURES
PERFORMANCE
VALUE FOR MONEY
OVERALL

The Adobe Photoshop Touch iPad is available from the iTunes Store for £6.99. For more information please visit the Adobe website.