Photoshop – From the makers of Photoshop

Let’s discuss one thing up front.  You’re iPhone, regardless of how awesome it is, is not your standard computer.  It simply can’t be, at least, not yet.  So there is a bit of a computing difference that you have to take into consideration when examining Photoshop for the iPhone.  To do otherwise would just be wrong and you would wind up severely disappointed.

Picture Edit

There are actually two things that I think work against this app.  The first, I have already talked about in the first paragraph of this review.  Second, it’s a free app!  How much do you expect Adobe to put into a free app?  They are a business after all.  Alright, so let’s get to what this app has to offer and I’ll try not to be too hard on it.

As we can see in the Pic Edit Screen, you have several options.  Starting from the upper left hand corner and working our way around clockwise, we start off with crop, rotate and flip.  No real need for explanation there.  Next, is your color control which allows you to change the exposure, saturation, tint and black & white.  Moving on, we have sketch and soft focus.  Then comes effects, of which there are eight.  That concludes the top row and all of the changes you can make on your photo.

Online Menu

On the bottom row of the screen you have quit, back, forward and save options.  So you have everything that you need, that’s for sure.  I’m guessing that features like layering and such would require too much CPU and memory.  Never mind the fact that this is a free app and such features would command a higher price.  Maybe that’s something for the future.

The next area I choose to mention is the access to photoshop.com accounts.  I did actually setup an online account just to learn more about this feature.  You get 2 gigs of storage, ability to modify the pictures and you control which photos are public.  It is a little different than photobucket.com but the core idea of online photo storage is the same.  You do have the option of upgrading your account too for more storage or to a pro account that would give you some more features, but I’ll let you investigate that on your own.  I will say one more thing about photoshop.com, they have a really nice interface.

Well, there really isn’t much more to show you.  The upload screen allows you to, wait for it, upload a photo.  The settings screen has nothing out of the ordinary.  In fact, it really almost has nothing on it at all.  You can login your adobe account, turn off the hints and check out the about screen.

I have mixed feeling about this app.  On the one hand, I expect more out of photoshop as they are the leader in photo editing, they are, afterall, a household name.  The term ‘photoshop’ has even become a verb: “I’m going to photoshop that picture”.  Then again, the app is free and therefore I shouldn’t expect it to be chock full of features.  Maybe they are planning to have something more in the future.

Cost: Free

What I thought in a nutshell!
Use-ability
How user friendly is the app and its interface?
Practicality
How likely is it that someone is going to use it?
Neat Factor
Will this app wow you?

Overall
How did it fair overall?