Adobe Photoshop Touch Apps for Photoshop CS5
Adobe recently announced a Photoshop Touch SDK (Software Development Kit) and, as examples of the SDK’s potential, three Photoshop Touch apps for the iPad. These three apps—Adobe Nav, Adobe Color Lava, and Adobe Eazel—are more exciting as representatives of what is possible with the new Photoshop Touch SDK than they are in practice but since Adobe refers to these as “initial” apps, we can reasonably expect more from Adobe, as well as the software developers that will take advantage of the SDK.
The apps, once loaded on the iPad, are capable of interacting with Adobe Photoshop CS5 via a wireless connection. You’ll need Adobe Photoshop CS5 and the free patch updating Photoshop to v. 12.0.4 or later (at the time of this review, we were able to update to v. 12.1 or CS5.1), which will be available beginning May 3 on adobe.com.
Where to Buy
The SDK is available now at adobe.com/devnet/photoshop.html. The individual apps, which range in price from $1.99 to $4.99, can be downloaded from the Apple iTunes App Store in May. Sign up at photoshop.com to be notified when the apps are released.
Adobe Nav ($1.99)
Of the three apps, Adobe Nav, although limited in its current iteration, probably best exhibits the potential of pairing the iPad with Photoshop. Establishing the wireless connection between your iPad and Photoshop is quick and easy (as long as your wireless is working properly). In Photoshop, go to Edit>Remote Connections, type in a service name and a password and make sure Enable Remote Connections is checked. Click OK. Then power up your iPad, open the Adobe Nav app, double click on the PS logo in the lower right corner, type in the service name you selected, type in your password and click Connect and you’re good to go.
Adobe Nav has two screens: one to view documents that are open in Photoshop; the other to select and activate Photoshop tools.
To view images on your iPad, tap the open document picker icon (a grid of four small squares) at the bottom of the screen. In this mode, you can open up as many as 200 files in Photoshop and they will appear in grid view on your iPad. Tap an image to make it the active photo in the main window of Photoshop on your desktop/laptop, making the iPad a sort of “touch” version of Bridge. One of the benefits vs. Bridge is that you can open and view images from any number of different folders at one time, while Bridge is limited to a single folder at a time. You can also double-tap an image to show some very basic metadata such as image size, width and height in pixels and in inches, resolution, color mode, and bit-depth.
Considering that Apple didn’t make it easy to transfer images to the iPad (there’s no current way to efficiently use a CompactFlash card reader or external hard drive), the ability to open images on the iPad via Adobe Nav is a huge step in the right direction. Unfortunately, your image files are only stored temporarily on the iPad so you really can’t edit them with any of your iPad apps. However, the image will be refreshed on the iPad with any edits you perform in Photoshop, although it may take a second or so for the iPad image to be updated.
The proxy images will remain visible on the iPad so you can share them with colleagues, clients, family and friends while Photoshop is open and you’re on the same wireless network. That’s okay if you only need to walk down the hall of your office or bring your iPad into the livingroom but what about taking your images on the road with you without a wireless connection to Photoshop? It’s possible but only if you follow a specific sequence of actions.
First, power off your iPad. Then close Photoshop on your desktop. The next time you power up your iPad and open Adobe Nav, your original images will appear—as long as there is no wireless connection with Photoshop. However, once the iPad and Photoshop are connected again, Adobe Nav will refresh and replace the current images with what is (or isn’t) open in the current Photoshop window. Also keep in mind that when the iPad is connected to Photoshop and you close the files on your computer, the images in Adobe Nav will be cleared as well. It’s not confusing as it may sound;
Adobe Nav offers several viewing choices. When you first sync images open in Photoshop with the iPad, they will open in grid view, so you can swipe the screen up or down to scroll through the images. Pinch outward to enlarge an individual image and the grid layout turns into a filmstrip. I tend to prefer the filmstrip view since it seems more natural, for me, to swipe left and right. If you pinch an image outward a second time, the image will zoom to full screen (pinch inward to go back to the standard size). Press and hold an image to drag it to a different position on the screen.
At the end of the filmstrip or the bottom of the grid view, you’ll find a blank square with a plus sign in the middle. Tap it and a new blank document will appear in Photoshop. There’s no control over the size or resolution, though, and while our open document was a 34.32MB file, measuring 3999 × 3000 pixels at 180ppi, the new blank document was 2.25MB at 1024 × 768 pixels, at a resolution of 72ppi, which means that you’ll most likely have to resize it in Photoshop anyhow so I’m not sure how useful this feature really is.
The other half of Adobe Nav, the tool palette, is accessed by tapping the cross icon at the bottom of the screen. When the tools portion of Adobe Nav opens, you’ll find a group of 16 tool icons, with larger icons to cycle through Screen Modes, to zoom into Actual Pixels and to switch between Background and Foreground colors.
Customizing the core group of 16 tools is effortless, although you’re limited to having only 16 tools at a time on the screen. Press the “x” in the upper left corner of a tool you don’t want or need on the screen to temporarily delete it from the group. To add different tools to the screen, hit the Edit button to access a scrollable list of the remaining tools. Then just press and drag the tool(s) you need into the main grouping.
Just tap an individual tool to activate it in Photoshop. Unfortunately, that’s about all you can do on the iPad in this mode. Any other adjustments, e.g., size and style of a brush, have to be made in Photoshop. And, while I like being able to zoom to Actual Pixels by tapping the tool on the iPad, there’s no way to zoom back out. Changing from foreground to background color—quick and easy with a single tap on the iPad—is limited as well since you have to go into Photoshop to select a color from the color picker or color palette.
Although I was less than enthusiastic about the tools feature in Adobe Nav because of its limitations, I wanted to try to integrate it into my workflow. I’m still not a huge fan (at least not in its current iteration) but I found a way to make it work for me. I kept the iPad to the left of my computer and worked the mouse (or my Wacom tablet) with my right hand. I don’t use a lot of keyboard shortcuts other than the basics so Adobe Nav functioned as a sort of substitute. Actually, I found that, some cases, it was easier to tap an icon on the iPad than use a keyboard shortcut. For example, you can type G on your keyboard to activate the Gradient/Paint Bucket tool but you still have to choose between the two on your computer screen. With Adobe Nav, the Gradient tool and the Paint Bucket tools are individually selectable so it saves an extra step. Adobe Nav isn’t going to save you a whole lot of time but, like the other Adobe touch apps, it’s a step in the right direction.
Adobe Color Lava ($2.99)
Adobe Color Lava is a color mixing station or, perhaps more accurately, a digital paint palette. Although not a necessity for photographers, some might find it helpful for developing custom colors for “hand” coloring images, among other potential uses. And it’s kind of fun, too.
The app hooks up to Photoshop using the same method as Adobe Nav but even without a connection, you can mix colors and create color themes that can be saved and added to your Photoshop swatches later on. The main interface is pretty streamlined, with its color wells, water well and fill-in-the-blank color swatches.
The main interface consists of a set of 6 color wells, which look similar to a watercolor set. There’s one group of colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple) and, if you touch the center icon, you can switch to a second set of monochrome “paint.” A mixing surface makes up more than half of the screen, with a small water well in the upper left corner. The water well simulates rinsing the paint off your finger when you touch it. It’s kind of silly but, at the same time, it’s visually very cool. Before I realized its purpose, though, I kept “dipping” my finger in the water well thinking I could use the water to dilute the paints that I had mixed on the palette. Instead, you can double-tap a color to adjust the saturation, along with the brightness and hue or switch to the monochrome paints (just tap the icon in the middle of the color wells) and add white, black or grey to adjust tints.
A column of blank swatches are positioned on the far right of the screen. Touch a blank swatch to select it, then mix your colors to fill the swatch (the swatch will refresh each time you layer one color on another during the blending process). Select another swatch and repeat until all the swatches are filled. You can also open an image stored in Photos on the iPad by tapping the camera icon in the lower right corner to pull a color from the image and add it to a swatch.
Once you’re happy with your swatches, switch screens (hit the grid icon at the bottom) to view all your color themes. The Edit function allows you rename or delete themes. Click Done, then double click a swatch to see the RGB and HSB values, send the swatch to a colleague via e-mail or use the iPad-Photoshop wireless connection to add it to your Photoshop color swatches.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that, in either mode, you can tap on an individual swatch in Color Lava to make that the foreground color in Photoshop.
Color Lava is kind of fun to play with and can be useful if and when you need to mix your own colors but if color accuracy is critical, compare the two. Colors on my Macbook Pro monitor were a little brighter than the ones displayed on the iPad. The two colors are certainly close enough to be usable for most projects, though.
Adobe Eazel ($4.99)
Adobe Eazel takes you back to the days of fingerpainting but without the mess. This painting app’s user interface is slightly more challenging than those of the other two apps but can be mastered with some practice.
Open up Eazel and you’re faced with a graphic showing you how to place your five fingers on the interface to call up the app’s tools. When you place all five fingers on the screen, five icons appear, each matching to a specific finger:
Starting with your thumb and working towards your pinky (if you’re left-handed, the finger/icon match-up is the same): Close/Undo/Redo; Color, Size, Settings. If, for example, you want to choose a color, place all five fingers on the screen until the icons appear, keep your forefinger (which is on the Color tool) on the iPad and release your other four digits. The Color tool will remain on the screen, while the others will temporarily disappear. Alternatively, you can release five fingers simultaneously and all five controls will remain.
The former method is an example of very cool technology but I found that the latter was easier and, because all controls were accessible at the same time, allowed me to more quickly make adjustments to the three main parameters: color, brush size, paint opacity.
Tapping the Color icon brings up a small color wheel with five miniature palettes and an brush graphic. Select a palette by touch and choose a color from the wheel with your fingertip to fill it. Repeat for each palette with the colors you’ll be using in your painting. Tap a palette to select a color—the palette graphic will pulse and the paint brush graphic will fill with the selected color.
Slide your finger up or down on the Size and Opacity icons to adjust the brush size and opacity. A small circle indicating color, size and opacity in the corner of the screen shows the changes in real time. Place your finger on a blank spot of the screen to hide the tools and start painting. You can use the entire screen for your artwork (pinching makes the canvas smaller), painting with your finger or with a stylus.
To become proficient with Eazel, you need to explore how the different brush sizes and opacity affect the consistency of the paint. Keep in mind that the paint, just like watercolors, goes on “wet” and dries to a slightly darker color and opacity. It’s also easier to blend your painting with larger brush sizes since colors bleed into others, while the smallest brush sizes result in sharper lines, albeit with slightly jagged edges.
The tool that falls under the thumb will close the current painting, and undo/redo a single brush stroke. When switching between painting and opening up the tool palette, I sometimes got unwanted spots of colors on the canvas. Since there’s only a single undo available, I’d load the paint brush with white and paint over the accidental dabs of paint.
The Settings tool opens up a screen where you can connect to Photoshop (in the same way as the other apps), save your painting to Photos on the iPad or send it to Photoshop via the wireless connection. The file is up-rez’d by Photoshop, resulting in a 9MB file, measuring 2048 × 1536 pixels at 72ppi. And, it comes in as a layered document so you can, for example, easily composite the painting with other artwork.
Unfortunately, at least in this version, you can’t save and re-open a file in Eazel to keep working on it. However, you can switch to other apps and, as long as you don’t power down the iPad, you can go back to Eazel to continue adding to the painting. If you power down the iPad, the next time you open Eazel, you’ll be greeted with a blank canvas.
I’ve seen some wonderful examples of paintings created with Eazel. Unfortunately, I don’t have the skills to create more than rudimentary (and childlike) objects with the app but I am having fun exploring my version of abstract expressionism.
Conclusion
These new Adobe touch apps are, particularly for photographers, a taste of technology that has great potential. I think the fact that Adobe has released an SDK and has referred to these as “initial” apps from Adobe means that we’ll be seeing even more relevant Photoshop iPad programs in the future and that’s exciting news.
Being able to drive Adobe Photoshop from an iPad and other devices (the Adobe Photoshop Touch SDK can be used to develop apps for Android and Blackberry as well as iOS mobile and tablet devices) is perfect for education and other interactive purposes. In fact, just as we were finishing this review, we came across what we think is one of the great ways in which this technology can be developed. DI Magazine (www.di-magazine.com) recently announced DI Direct Photoshop Touch and explains that, you can “read the technique in the magazine, tap the step entry and see that step performed in Photoshop.” A free preview edition will be available in May from the Apple App store. Register at www.di-magazine.com to be notified when DI Direct is available.
There are plenty of apps for the iPad and other iOS devices for photographers and we’ll be posting some of our favorites in another article soon. But using a device like the iPad to drive Photoshop has limitless possibilities and we’re anxious to see what Adobe and SDK developers have in store for us down the road.
Pros: ability to access and interact with Photoshop from the iPad, generally intuitive interfaces (Eazel is the exception), some practical uses
Cons: Eazel is relatively expensive; limited to Adobe Photoshop CS5 (with free update to CS5.5); only Adobe Nav has somewhat practical use for photographers
Where to Buy
The SDK is available now at adobe.com/devnet/photoshop.html. The individual apps, which range in price from $1.99 to $4.99, can be downloaded from the Apple iTunes App Store in May. Sign up at photoshop.com to be notified when the apps are released.
More
- Theano’s member page
- Photo.net Digital Darkroom Forum
- Creative Photoshop Tutorials
- Advanced Photoshop Tutorials
Original text and images ©2011 Theano Nikitas.
