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Photoshop.com Mobile, an app by Adobe Systems (Nasdaq: ADBE), is available for free at the App Store.
It's slowly becoming apparent that cellphone photos need not look awful. Some phone are hitting the market with 8 or more megapixels, approaching the sort of resolution you'd get on a low-cost pocket cam. That's still not nearly professional hardware, but it sure will come out better than the muddy, washed-out tile mosaics you got from the cameras that they slapped onto cellphones when the two types of devices were first being paired off together.
The original iPhone and iPhone 3G sport only a modest two-megapixel cam, and the 3GS ups it to just three. Transfer them to a computer with a big monitor, and they won't make for a very pretty wallpaper or screen saver. But they do look OK when you view them on the iPhone's own screen (or the screen of any other smartphone), and now that the iPhone finally has MMS, that's probably where a lot of the cellphone photos you take will probably be viewed -- a smallish screen, rather than a big display.
The same goes for all the other ways we share photos. Facebook and Flickr, to name just two, both have several versions of mobile apps out there for whatever smartphone platform you use. If everyone's looking at your photos through little three-inch windows, two or three megapixels will usually do the trick.
So if your cellphone photos are destined to live forever on the small screen, why not do some touch-up nip-tucking there as well? The App Store has a whole section devoted to photography and photo tools, and one of the newest is Adobe's own Photoshop.com Mobile.
Uploads Great, Downloads Cumbersome
This app is a photo editing tool, but one of the main points it advertises is its ability to serve as a portal to the Photoshop.com photo sharing site. Setting up an online account isn't necessary to use this app's editing features, but it is very easy to do, and it gives you a personalized URL for your shared photos. Once you've signed on, you can access and share via email anything in your personal online library. Photoshop.com has its own set of editing features if you access it via a desktop browser.
The Photoshop iPhone app is great for on-the-go uploads of photos you take using the phone. Snap a shot, touch it up with the app's tools, and send it to your online library.
However, it doesn't seem to work as smoothly in reverse -- I couldn't find a way to easily download the photos I accessed in my online Photoshop library directly to my own iPhone for immediate editing or placement on a network like Facebook. Instead, I had to email it to myself (which sends a link, not an attachment), then go through Safari to download it to my Camera Roll. All told, that's three apps -- Photoshop, Mail and Safari -- to download one photo. It seems as though that process could have been made easier.
Edited Down
As one might expect, the variety of touch-up and editing options you get on Photoshop's iPhone app isn't as extensive as what you'll find on the Photoshop.com Web site (and don't expect to get much out of Photoshop.com through Safari -- it's Flash city), and it's nothing like Adobe's full Photoshop desktop application.
Across the top are icons for your four main editing categories, each with a variety of sub-options. The cropping tool lets you crop, rotate and flip, and each action is done by flicking the image with your finger.
A color spectrum icon takes you to the Exposure, Saturation, Tint and Black and White options. With the exception of Black and White, these tools let you adjust values gradually by sliding your finger left to right, then hitting a checkmark icon when you get it right where you want it (or a red X to undo that change).
You also get options for adding a sketch appearance, softening the focus, or adding effects like a border, a vignette blur, rainbow coloration or soft black and white, among others. You can undo or redo steps by tapping a red or green arrow icon at the bottom of the screen.
Things like distortion features and spot touch-up tools are available on the full-blown Web app, but not in the iPhone app. You also can't pull or pinch to zoom in or out while you edit.
The "Save and Exit" button will give your edited image a new name and stick it in your Camera Roll -- I like that it does this rather than overwriting the image with the edited version. "Save and Upload" puts it into your online Photoshop library.
Bottom Line
People who already share photos through Photoshop.com will probably like this app's built-in integration with that site. You can give your photos a minor makeover and post them to your little corner of the cloud almost as quickly as you can snap them.
However, the editing tools available in the iPhone app felt a little sparse, especially considering that you can't zoom in on a photo to do any touching up. The three-app workaround to get a photo from Photoshop.com onto my phone also seemed unnecessary.
Adobe obviously knows how to make great photo editing software, and they also know how to get away with charging a hefty price for premium versions of that software. It only makes sense that Adobe offers this free iPhone app to lend a new degree of usability to its free photo site, but perhaps it should also make a premium version of this app, charge a few bucks, and throw in more functions and greater ease of use.
