Last month, Adobe announced that they would be launching tablet apps that could communicate with their desktop image editing software, Photoshop, using a new development kit called the Adobe Touch SDK. Today, the first batch of their own apps have hit the Apple App Store, ready for iPad owners to try out.
Adobe Color Lava turns the iPad into a traditional painter’s palate, allowing users to mix custom colours using touch, and send those colours right to Photoshop on the desktop. You can save sets of colours for particular projects, and adjust hue, saturation, and brightness with sliders on top of the more organic mixing interface. Adobe Eazel is a bit more direct in that it lets you sketch out pictures with your fingers, and when you’re ready to polish it up, you can transmit your creations to the desktop wirelessly. Those files take layers into account, and upscale the image appropriately for the larger screen. Finally, there’s Adobe Nav, which is meant to help you navigate the desktop app with helpful shortcuts to common tasks.
Nav in particular seems like a great use case for tablets in general; if you’re already at your computer, a lot of what a tablet can do is redundant, but if it plugs into and extends what you’re working on, then tablets have a reason to sit on a desk next to a mouse. Of course, as tablets become more powerful, maybe we’ll see the full version of Photoshop make the leap to mobile someday. iPad is the sensible first choice to get these apps out, Android is next in line, and the BlackBerry PlayBook not far behind that. Here are some videos giving you a taste of the new apps, or you can go ahead and get downloading at the links below. Nav is going for $1.99, Color Lava for $2.99, and Eazel for $4.99. Any developers interested in plugging in to Photoshop sould take a look at Adobe’s Touch SDK.