Ah, the endless wonders of Adobe Photoshop! The collages, the paintings, the manips, the animations, the natural retouches, the otherworldly tableaus. The endless hours spent inside the program by both amateurs and professionals. Well, starting next week (May 28, 2015) you will have them on your smartphones and tablets no longer.
Earlier this week, on Thursday, Adobe announced that they will be taking down their Photoshop Touch app from Google Play and the App Store. Instead, the company will be replacing the old app, which mimicked a desktop interface, with three new “capture” apps, specifically designed with handset devices in mind.
The apps in question will be called “Colour CC”, “Brush CC” and “Shape CC”. For those not in the know, “CC” stands for Creative Cloud, a label associated with Adobe’s most recent upgrade of their programs.
The names are highly intuitive. Colour CC allows users to capture and edit color themes by simply pointing the handset camera at any random object.
Brush CC allows users to create and edit brushes for painting on images.
Shape CC allows users to convert real photos into vector images.
Handset users who already have the Photoshop Touch app and do not wish to uninstall it, will still be able to use it. The only difference will be that they won’t be receiving any further updates from Adobe. But the app as they currently have it will work just fine.
Adobe posted an announcement on their blog saying that “For those of you who have been using Photoshop Touch, thank you and please continue creating amazing work with it; while it will no longer be available in stores as of May 28th and we won’t ship further updates, it will remain completely functional on your devices for the foreseeable future”. The company also believes that building the future sometimes means making tough choices.
Adobe did mention however that they are currently working on developing another all-in-one Android and iOS app that will serve as a direct successor to the old 2012 Photoshop Touch.
The in-development app is tentatively called “Project Rigel”. Rumours and details relating to it are scarce for the moment, however Adobe did release a demo video of the new software earlier this month, leading industry experts to believe that the program will be officially available for purchasing somewhere in late 2015.
Project Rigel will be able to edit images as large as 50 MP, significantly more than any other similar app on the market right now – 12 MP is the most you get.
The zoom will not be jittery at high-resolutions either, as the demo showed it running smoothly on one of those 50 MP images.
Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Adobe’s product manager for digital imaging, gave a statement saying that the company has every intention of helping their customers find success quickly. For this to happen, they believe that they have to provide them with the right set of tools for the job and the very best technology and access.
He explained that while Photoshop Touch was an all-in-one solution that mirrored the desktop version of Photoshop several years ago, when it was introduced, technology has advanced quickly, and today the company’s new mobile solutions vastly expand creative possibilities when connected together and to the desktop.
Project Rigel can be accessed via Adobe’s Creative Cloud as well, giving users the neat option of starting a project on their home PC, then finishing it on their smartphone while riding the subway.
Image Source: tianjimedia.com
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