Image via USA Today
On Friday, Adobe rolled out Photoshop.com Mobile for the iPhone. A straightforward and free mini Photoshop app that lets you tweak and add effects to your photos taken with the iPhone, this app brought with it a great deal of initial excitement and curiosity. Eric Zeman at InformationWeek was clear in his own excitement as he revealed the news.
Adobe surprised more than a few people when it made free (yes, free) photo editing software available for the iPhone. Given what Adobe charges for Photoshop CS4, you'd think this software would cost a pretty penny. Nope. It's gratis.
The buzz and excitement quickly faded when, apparently, some folks started realizing that the iPhone's version of Photoshop can't replace Photoshop's $599 desktop application.
So, I guess at the risk of offending some, I'll go ahead and ask the obvious but awkward question that this reality begs to be asked. Was anyone really dumb enough to think that the Photoshop app would really offer the full range of complex functions native to the desktop version of Photoshop?
The most basic features offered by the software include cropping, rotating and flipping; ways to alter color exposure, saturation, tin, white and black; filters that apply sketching or soft focus; as well as effects such as vignetting, borders white glow and so on.
We've obviously grown to depend on our iPhone as much as we depend on our computers, but this is one example where we may have simply expected too much from an app that, in my opinion, is still worth having and getting excited about. Of course, if you feel differently, I would love to hear why.
Reply
