Ahead of its annual MAX Conference kicking off today, Adobe has launched an entirely new suite of apps that are now available on the iPhone and iPad App Store. This year, Adobe is focusing on simplifying its mobile software lineup into four categories that sync with desktop counterparts: Illustration, Imaging, Video, and a new platform called Creative Cloud Capture Apps. Each of the apps within the four categories are either brand new or have been enhanced.
Imaging:
- Photoshop Sketch: This app, partly a re-branded form of the existing Adobe Sketch app on the App Store, integrates with the existing Photoshop and Illustrator apps on the desktop as a form of a drawing tablet. You can use Sketch to draw items with your fingers or a stylus and have those drawings, through the cloud, integrate into your existing desktop workflow.
- Photoshop Mix: Adobe first launched Photoshop Mix for iPad earlier this year (pictured above), and it is a highly sophisticated editing tool complete with layer management and advanced manipulation of assets. We praised the application in our review earlier this year, saying that “it brings desktop quality editing to iOS.” Today, Adobe is bringing Mix to the iPhone’s screen and (unsurprisingly) giving both versions enhanced compatibility with the new Photoshop updates for the desktop.
- Lightroom Mobile (iPhone, iPad): Adobe’s Lightroom app for iPad and iPhone is gaining a couple of important new features today: a social element that allows people to more easily comment on and share photos plus the ability to synchronize GPS metadata for photos between the mobile and desktop apps.
Illustration:
- Illustrator Line: Illustrator Line “gives users access to their favorite vector drawing tools and features in a modern, streamlined interface, high-fidelity integration with Illustrator CC and enhanced support for Adobe Ink and Slide.”
- Illustrator Draw: Complementing the new Line app, Draw now “gives creatives new features for perfectly distributing shapes as they draw, plus the ability to send sketches to Illustrator CC, where they have full access to their original vector paths for editing.”
Video:
- Premiere Clip: With Premiere Clip, Adobe, for the first time, is entering the video editing space on iOS. The new Clip app is a very watered down version of the famous Premiere app on the desktop, and it allows for simple editing (audio, text, transitions, a few effects) on both the iPhone and iPad with easy synchronization to the complete desktop Premiere app.
Capture Apps:
- Brush: Brush for iOS is a dedicated application for creating brushes, based on your existing images, for use in the desktop Adobe Creative Cloud apps. The iPad version is pictured above.
- Shape: Shape lets you create shapes for use in the Desktop apps. “A high-contrast photo of anything – a chair, a pet, or a hand-drawn font – is converted into vector art that can be used immediately in Illustrator CC and Adobe Illustrator Line via Creative Cloud Libraries,” says Adobe.
- Color: Rebranded from “Kuler,” the new Color app “allows creatives to capture colors and save them as themes that are immediately available in other Adobe applications, including Illustrator CC and Photoshop CC.”
The new applications are all available today, and they are free additions for everyone with a Creative Cloud subscription.
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I’m done with the Adobe ecosystem. In the 90s they epitomized the power of personal computing Now they’re all about milking their monopoly ala Microsoft in 2000. I’ll find other tools, thanks
Very silly. They make the best products and release major upgrades to the software without charging more than the price of a meal out for two a month.
I agree, when CC was first announced I was not keen on a subscription model. Before CC I would upgrade every two to three years but now I am always up to date. I would say that my productivity has also improved, the CC tutorials and support have enabled me to start using applications that I didn’t even bother with before.
Find myself using the Kuler or Color app all the time and think that the Shape and Brush apps with also be used allot.
Yes Adobe does have the lions share but at least they have listened to their users and started to implement tools and features that the users have asked for.
C-Yuh!
How does Photoshop Touch IOS fit in the mix?
It doesn’t. It’s just the more advanced image editing app for a premium. Actually all those new apps are the odd ones out. It scatters the PS experience into many pieces.
I guess they are trying out what’s working and what’s not to then one day create App thing to rule them all. I would’ve thought I’d had a bigger problem with so many different apps, but apparently I don’t. If somehow doesn’t make such a big difference if I access those functions within one App or if I have everything within one app-folder. The former might be more unified but the latter enables me to decide what I need and what not. And I actually see me working with Draw/Sketch and maybe Shape a lot more than I do with PS Touch. I got PS Touch but never really used it, as I’d just always prefer doing it on the desktop. So I agree with that idea of expanding desktop apps with mobile stuff rather than replacing them.
Getting better, you can use the iPad or even the now larger displays on the iPhone. I wonder what OPTION for graphic designers will have the iPad Pro.
The mobile apps are… underwhelming. I’m still waiting for Lightroom to live up to its name. You could do orders of magnitude more with photo’s with iPhoto (why did you kill it Apple?) than that POS. I love their desktop software but their mobile offerings have been mediocre at best.
The only decent one they’ve got is Kuler, or now Adobe Colour, which lets you create colour swatches from photo’s and stuff.
I don’t see Cloud integration (or the “shared “Library” thing they kept showing at Adobe Max) in any of my desktop Adobe apps. Is the update not out yet? My desktop Cloud says I am all up to date.
I’m not on the bandwagon. In fact, I cancelled my CC subscription because I was tired of paying Adobe to be their beta tester. For every new “feature” introduced into Illustrator at least two old features were broken. I’m sticking with CS5 until a viable competitor to adobe appears, and they will.