Chromebooks finally welcomed into the Photoshop family

Chromebook Photoshop
Chromebooks to get slightly more useful

For an operating system that lives mostly on the cloud, Chrome OS provides users with just about everything they need, from working on documents to streaming video. But one crucial omission has always been a decent image editor - that is, until now.

Adobe is working with Google on a special beta called Project Photoshop Streaming. As the name suggests, users will be able to stream Adobe Photoshop on their Chromebooks to edit images when the arguably best app available on the platform so far has been the Pixlr editor.

This special streaming version of the Photoshop has been designed to work from the cloud. Users will also be able to tweak files stored on Google Drive without needing to download and re-upload files.

Adobe also notes users will be able to access Photoshop with the Chrome browser on Windows as well.

Head in the cloud

Initially Photoshop on Chrome OS will only be available to US-based Adobe education customers with a paid Creative Cloud membership. What's more, this trial program also requires eligible users to sign-up for the beta.

While the beta is limited for now, the image application maker promises that streaming access to Photoshop will expand soon.

Aside from gaming, photo-editing applications have been a gaping hole in Chrome OS ecosystem. With the recent addition of Android apps on Chrome OS, it looks like Google is making moves to fill in the missing pieces in its cloud-based operating system.

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.