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Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

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Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#41
post #32
post #9

I wonder if people will drop Photoshop from their list of deficiencies when the topic Tablet vs. PC comes up. Often, some people bring up the lack of productivity tools like PS, X_Cad, writing and building code etc.

My Photoshop workflow depends on its ability to act as a plugin host for third party workflow tools and to integrate with the rest of a professional toolchain. So, for me, Photoshop functionally remains a PC/Mac application. (This applies to most applications ported to iOS or even the Web with such fanfare -- I still use Office plugins here and there...)

It's the same with music software.

It's wonderful that Reaper has a native Linux version! I might just go with Linux when I have the means to build a dedicated mixing and mastering computer, though I'll miss the ease and quality of SerumFX. Unfortunately, few VST developers have taken advantage of the new Linux support in the VST SDK. And then there's Ableton Live. All of it runs on Windows and Mac. None of it is likely to see an iOS port.

I need my whole workflow to come along. None of it is trivially replaced.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#42
post #29

Well that's disappointing :(, I would have expected the full Photoshop experience to be ported to the web instead, not in Apple's locked garden. Sigh.

ex-Adobe engineer here - don't be disappointed, I think they'll do it soon.

I was working in the acrobat team till last month, and we were working on porting the Acrobat Reader to the web. When I left it was in the internal beta stage with minor UX tweaking work left. It is expected to be release very soon.

I think similar efforts may be (or will soon be) ongoing in other teams as well.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#43
post #6

Mouse/trackpad cursor support, keyboard shortcuts, and robust filesystem access are required to intelligently use Photoshop. Does Adobe expect that iOS will eventually get there?

iPads support keyboards. Wacom's entire business is predicated on mouse/trackpad being inferior to styluses for many uses of this and similar software.

And... while there are some pretty easy UI wins Apple could make there [eg: the special handling of 'photos' in many apps makes treating them as 'just files' awkward] the iOS 11 system seems reasonable for most common workflows. Do you have any specific complaints?

I'm sure adobe would like the ecosystem to get better for them over time, but there's nothing blocking their software from being useful on the iPads of today.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#44
post #16

Affinity Photo on the iPad made quite a splash and was Apple's software of the year in some category. I guess it showed Adobe that there is real money to be made. And Affinity Designer for iPad has just been released.

I imagine it's less about money to be made but rather about fearing money to lose. Affinity offering a more and more well rounded solution with their Photoshop, Illustrator and now upcoming Indesign competitor, most of which are already on iPad today. With a Lightroom competitor in the works, I imagine Adobe is worried people will leave them completely for Affinity because of some customer's hatred of the subscription model, and lack of iCloud and other Apple specific tech. If affinity designer didn't release their app yesterday and announce publisher I'm sure Adobe wouldn't have leaked this news today. Excited for all the competition.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The apple pencil is pretty good. As of the most recent generation of iPads, all current iPads support it too (not just the iPad Pros, as was the case in the past).

But what about "gorilla arm"? I used to hear that as an excuse for why touch screen windows laptops with a pen were impractical.

That applies more to larger vertically mounted touch screens (including laptops with touch screens). Using an iPad with a stylus isn’t very different from using a Wacom tablet, which are fairly standard in the industry that uses photoshop anyways.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#46
post #27

I'm an iOS user. But frankly, iOS sucks for this kind of work. I tried. Copy pasting is slow, file handling is unnecesserily clunky (just give me a file browser Apple). And exporting always needs some kind of workaround because I can't just pop in USB drives (which my wife's Surface Pro gladly accepts).

Personally, I’m imagining a future where you don’t need a USB drive to move files between devices. Dropbox, Creative Cloud, Universal AirDrop.

I would like the touchscreen paradigm to be expanded. Pencil, force touch, and perhaps something like Kinect/Soli:

https://atap.google.com/soli/

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#47
post #27

I'm an iOS user. But frankly, iOS sucks for this kind of work. I tried. Copy pasting is slow, file handling is unnecesserily clunky (just give me a file browser Apple). And exporting always needs some kind of workaround because I can't just pop in USB drives (which my wife's Surface Pro gladly accepts).

This is arguably a chicken-and-egg problem. If products like Photoshop make these pain points obvious to more users, Apple has good reason to improve such workflows.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#48
post #10

Porting photoshop to iOS/ARM could also in part be motivated by a known or perceived Apple transition from Intel to their own ARM chips.

I know a lot of people really don’t like the idea of macOS on ARM, but I think it could be really valuable for the PC market as as a whole. Intel could use more competition. And a transition towards a less closed architecture would be good for computing in general IMO.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#49
post #29

Well that's disappointing :(, I would have expected the full Photoshop experience to be ported to the web instead, not in Apple's locked garden. Sigh.

ex-Adobe engineer here - don't be disappointed, I think they'll do it soon. I was working in the acrobat team till last month, and we were working on porting the Acrobat Reader to the web. When I left it was in the internal beta stage with minor UX tweaking work left. It is expected to be release very soon. I think similar efforts may be (or will soon be) ongoing in other teams as well.

Interesting. Pretty great that Adobe didn't require a non disclosure of that type of information for a set time after leaving the company like most. Bravo for Adobe for allowing their ex employees freedom to talk about what they are working on.

Re: Adobe will bring the full Photoshop to the iPad

#50
post #27

I'm an iOS user. But frankly, iOS sucks for this kind of work. I tried. Copy pasting is slow, file handling is unnecesserily clunky (just give me a file browser Apple). And exporting always needs some kind of workaround because I can't just pop in USB drives (which my wife's Surface Pro gladly accepts).

Don’t you have a file browser now ? What are the main limitations you are hitting ?
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