Adobe releases Photoshop Touch for iPad 2

Adobe has this morning released the iOS version of Photoshop Touch, after a bit of a hiccup over the weekend when it was briefly released and then withdrawn again in short order. Yours for £6.99, it’s for iPad 2 only - clearly a bit too much for the original iPad. Containing some core Photoshop features as well as new tablet-specific features, it’s described by Adobe as being right for anyone – amateur, enthusiast or professional – who wants to edit photos on a tablet.

That is, if you were somehow expecting the full-blown Photoshop experience on your iPad then you’re going to be disappointed. There’s a bit of a focus on sharing and friends and Facebook about the whole enterprise that, we reckon, places Touch more at the Elements end of the scale. The most telling restriction, as far as most professional designers will be concerned, is the maximum image resolution. At 1600 x 1600 pixels you won’t be using it to create enormous full-bleed images, but once you get past that you’ll find a decently featured app that integrates right into Adobe’s Creative Cloud.

So, what can you do with it? Here’s Adobe’s Russell Brown with an overview:

Photoshop Touch's headlines are layers, a cool-looking scribble selection tool that enables you to select objects by just scribbling over them, filter brushes with which you can paint filter effects, edge-aware painting and a refine edge tool that, says Adobe, makes it easy to cut out objects with tricky edges, such as hair. You also get text tools, plus tone and colour adjustment features, and you can print your work using AirPrint. There’s also an inspirational gallery where you can find styles and results that you’d like to achieve and then follow tutorials that tell you how to get them. And if you want to export your files to Photoshop you can, but only through the Creative Cloud, and while you can import PSDs into Photoshop Touch they’ll be flattened into a single layer.

In short there's a lot to love about it. The insistence on Creative Cloud integration is slightly annoying, since there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to just transfer your work across to full-blown Photoshop without it, but at seven quid for a thoroughly decent set of image tools we’re not really complaining. Get it here, or find out more over at Adobe, or simply watch some more videos below.