Review: Adobe Photoshop Touch
Last November, Adobe released Photoshop Touch for Android based tablets, leaving the iPad crying miserably! Until now!
As a heavy Photoshop user and instructor, I’ve been hoping for a tablet based version of the application that would allow me to perform basic edits of my photos on the go. However, I didn’t expect the full on Photoshop application to be ported over to a tablet. That’s just not very realistic. Adobe has delivered an incredible tablet optimized version of Photoshop, which is capable of a lot more than I had expected.
Launch
When you first launch the Photoshop Touch application, you’re given the option to Begin a Tutorial or Begin a Project.
If you have yet to use Photoshop Touch, I highly recommend going through some of the tutorials. This section contains 13 tutorials on the various features that are available within Photoshop Touch.
Begin a Project
When you’re ready to being your editing, hopping into the Begin a Project section will allow you to load in a photo from a variety of sources, including the photos on your iPad, Creative Cloud, Google, Facebook or you can take a fresh photo from your camera.
Once you choose the image that you want to edit, you’ll be presented with the editing interface, which is quite similar to the desktop version of Photoshop. Your Tools Bar is on the left, Layers Panel on the right, and the Menu Bar is at the top.
The Tools
Holding down your finger on the active tool (very top of Tools Bar) will display the full Tools Bar, with all the tools that are available to you. Just like in the desktop version of Photoshop, many of the tools contain similar tools which are grouped together. Moving your finger overtop of any of the tools will also display the additional tools, as seen below.
If you’re a current Photoshop user, you’ll instantly be familiar with most of the tools that are available in Photoshop Touch. Most of the work just like they do on the desktop version of Photoshop, except you’re now using your finger. One of the unique tools that I want to point out, is the Scribble Selection Tool.
Scribble Selection Tool
This is a two step tool. Step one is to create an outline on the inside of the subject that you want to turn into a selection, as you can see below.
Once the Keep area has been defined, tap on the Remove button in your Tools Bar, and draw an outline on the outside of the subject.
Once the Remove line has been completed, Photoshop Touch will generate your [rough] selection.
If the selection’s edges are slightly rough, just like in Photoshop CS5, you can refine it! Under the Select menu at the top, choose Refine Edge.
The Refine Edge view, similar to Quick Mask, will show you a red overlay to separate the selected/non-selected area.
At this point, you want to trace along the edge of your subject.
This will leave you with a much more accurate and smoother selection. At this point, to extract your subject, you can either choose the Extract option under the Edit menu (pencil icon), or press the plus button in the Layers Panel, and choose New Layer From Selection.
This will place your selection on it’s own layer. Pressing the plus button again, you can now load in an additional photo to place in the background.
Now using the Adjust and Effects menus, you can apply many of the same adjustments to your layers like you could in Photoshop CS5.
Photoshop Touch is available for the iPad 2 in the App Store for $9.99. iTunes Link
This post will be updated throughout the week.
