Last week was a good week in terms of interesting new iPhone apps: we got Tweetie 2, one of the best Twitter apps out there right now, and Adobe’s own Photoshop.com Mobile. Don’t be fooled by its Photoshop name. It’s by no means a fully equipped image manipulation app. It’s more like a quick way to polish your photos.
After starting the app you can choose from where you want to get the to be edited photo is coming from. As with other apps it’s the usual camera roll or the iPhone camera. From there it’s off to the editing.
The edit mode includes the following options:
– cropping and straightening
– modifying exposure, saturation and tint
– converting to black and white
– making a sketch of your picture
– a soft focus filter
– various other effects like increased vibrancy, pop, adding a border, vignette blur, warm vintage, rainbow, white glow and some more
While cropping works quite easily, the straightening part is a little tedious. It requires some fine control on your fingers are doing on the touchscreen. I find it hard to get the result I’m aiming for. Cropping on the other hand is easy and works by putting your finger on one of the handles on the edges of the photo. Some of the filter functions are controlled by moving your finger up and down on the screen. So don’t wonder if you select a filter and don’t see any changes. Don’t worry though: if you’re using the app for the first time you get some helpful hints here and there that introduce how the selected function is actually controlled.
After editing the image you can save it to the camera roll or upload it to Adobe’s own photoshop.com, the online version of Photoshop. The uploaded files can then be send out via mail.
One glaring omission is a way of downloading files from your photoshop.com account and editing them on your device. I’d also like some simple painting tools and a way to add text to a photo. One nice thing I’d love to see is the ability to modify the image based on a curve. That’s something the touch screen could be very useful for.
Photoshop.com Mobile is a free app, same goes for an account on photoshop.com. So just go grab it and give it a try. You can find some photos of the interface in the gallery.