After having first given demos of them at Photoshop World in March, Adobe today unveiled three new “Photoshop Touch” apps for the iPad using the Photoshop Touch SDK, all now available in the App Store. All three act as supplements to Mac and Windows versions of Photoshop CS5, allowing artists to use touch to create custom color swatches and themes, to create realisting paintings using “wet” and “dry” paints, or to navigate through Photoshop, select tools and control actions using the iPad as the input surface and more. The three apps — called Color Lava, Eazel and Nav — were designed to demonstrate the potential of the Touch SDK for Photoshop.
Adobe Color Lava ($3) uses fingertip control to mix colors on the iPad in a manner similar to that used by painters throughout the centuries to create custom colors, and also acts like an extended custom swatch library, allowing users to send selected swatches back to Photoshop’s main library.
Adobe Eazel ($5) allows an advanced form of finger-painting, either over the top of an existing image or as a blank canvas to fill. The app uses “wet” and “dry” paints and a clever “toolbar-less” approach so users can immerse themselves in the creative process, creating watercolor or impressionist or hybrid styles of imagery, calling up tools only when desired through five-finger contact, and can transmit the image back to Photoshop for additional work or to add to an existing image.
Adobe Nav ($2) takes the familiar photoshop toolkit and makes it available on the iPad, meant to be used in conjunction with Photoshop on the computer to both provide touch access to the tools as well as use the iPad as a second view of the images being worked on. Users can browse through their open files, zoom in on images (up to 200 open files) or create new files. Tools selected on the iPad are instantly mirrored on the computer, and users can crop, rotate and execute other commands with their fingers or with the mouse as desired.
Current Photoshop CS5 owners can download a free update either from within the application or via the Adobe Application Manager to enable the interaction between the iPad apps and their computer’s copy of Photoshop. Developers can download the free Photoshop Touch SDK for Windows or Mac using the Adobe Application Manager. The SDK allows for the development of helper apps for Photoshop on several platforms, including Android and Blackberry Playbook in addition to iOS. All of the apps require at least Adobe Photoshop CS5 to interact with.
