Ahead of what's expected to be the official unveiling at today's (November 4) Adobe Max conference, Adobe Photoshop for iPad has already appeared on the App Store.
It was widely expected that the app wouldn't be available until some days after the official announcement, but it's available now. The free download will see you have unrestricted access to the app for a full 30 days – beyond that you'll need a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.
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At the time of writing you can get a Creative Cloud subscription for £9.98 / $9.99 / AU$14.29 a month, which includes Photoshop and Lightroom across all your (compatible) devices, including computers and iPads.
The key benefit of the new version is that it enables you to edit your files just as you might do on your desktop. So you get PSD (Photoshop Document) support, layers, selection tools, and many of the other editing tools you’ll be used to from the desktop version, but optimized for touchscreen interfaces.
That’s great news for anybody who wants to edit their images on the move and doesn’t necessarily have their laptop with them.
Cloud working
Another plus point is the ability to save your files in the cloud, and resume working on them later on another device.
Over the years we’ve seen some 'Lite' Photoshop and Lightroom options for iPads and other mobile devices, but they’ve always been something of a compromise, which you’d only really use if you had no other option available.
Professional and news photographers should find the new app particularly useful, as they’ll be able to edit and upload photos from the scene of an event rather than having to wait until they get home, and without having carry a laptop with them at all times.
We've had a brief play with Photoshop for iPad, and we found that it wouldn't open raw files from a Nikon Z7, while some functionality appears to be missing; however; considering that the app hasn’t been officially announced yet, we're hoping that fixes for any issues will be rolled out promptly.
