Adobe Photoshop has been a part of every designer or photographer's tool belt for years now. In fact, programs like Photoshop are the main reason I still keep my laptop close by (in case of a photo-editing emergency).
But as tablets become more and more commonplace, there's a noticeable lack of quality touch-friendly photo editing programs.
Sure, you have Photoshop Express or more niche programs like Instagram, but neither have the performance or utility to make it appealing in a more professional design setting.
Adobe is hoping to remedy that with their 4 latest releases. The first three are the trio of iOS apps that Adobe has released for the iPad and iPad 2. All three apps are meant to interact with the desktop version of Photoshop.
Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop lets you mix custom colors and swatches that instantly transfer to the desktop. Adobe Eazel for Photoshop is a paint-like programs that lets you "paint" on the iPad and transfer it to the desktop. Lastly, Adobe Nav for Photoshop is more of an organizational tool for heavy Photoshop users that lets you browse and keep track of up to 200 open Photoshop files as well as customize the Photoshop toolbar.
The fourth release is the launch of the Photoshop Touch SDK, allowing developers to create touch-based Photoshop apps for all platforms. This is great news for PC-based Android users that have the large developer community that they do, because this means we should start to see Android versions of these apps before long.
The most interesting part about all of this is the role that Adobe sees tablets playing. They seem to see tablets as complimentary devices to laptops or desktop computers rather than a replacement. It's a smart move, and could be the selling point to a tech-savvy designer community that likely has both types of devices.
