- Adobe has finally announced
a real Photoshop app for the iPad
that's coming some time in 2019.
We got to try out an early beta version of that
and what we saw was pretty promising.
It's not an exact copy of the desktop app
but its biggest selling point
is that it uses real PSD files.
Adobe has actually created these new cloud PSD files
that will let you work seamlessly across all your devices
and automatically syncs any edits you make to the cloud.
So if you're retouching a photo on the desktop
and you need to adjust some stuff on the go,
you can open up that same PSD file in your iPad
and continue working on it.
But here's what happens when you first open up Photoshop.
You have all your cloud documents here
and I'm just gonna open up this file
made by our illustrator, Alex Castro.
On the left here, you have all the tools
that you may be used to seeing in Photoshop.
There's brush, gradients, eraser,
everything you're used to seeing.
And here on the right, you have your layers panel,
which is collapsible, giving you more space to work.
And what's really cool about Photoshop
is that you can have as many layers as you want.
Compared to some other apps
that might limit how many layers you can have
or make you buy more, there's really no limit here.
So, keep in mind, this isn't the finished product,
so a lot of the features like Text or Crop
have interface elements here but just don't work right now.
And there's other features, like Timeline,
which aren't included here at all,
so we're assuming it won't be
in the first version when it launches,
which is kind of unfortunate for animators
who are the ones who could really benefit
from a mobile device for such a labor-intensive process.
So, we're gonna try to use the functions that are available
and see how far we can get with that.
Based on the tools they've prioritized on having
in this first build, Adobe's focus for Photoshop on iPad
is mainly for compositing.
So, I'm gonna take a photo of Carly Rae Jepsen
and make it look like she's holding a sword.
I'm gonna go ahead and import some photos
and this version of Photoshop
can let you import photos from iCloud Drive,
Google Drive, and Dropbox.
I'm going to go to my Camera Roll
and open up this photo of Carly.
And then I'm gonna add the picture of the sword.
I can resize the sword and rotate it
and bring that closer to her
so it looks like she's holding it.
I'm going to just erase it
and this might take a while. (chuckles)
I don't need to be too precise, as long as we get the idea.
To undo, you can tap with two fingers.
Almost there.
This is gonna look so good.
And now, I'm gonna adjust the opacity of the sword,
so we can look through and see the part of the hand
where she's actually holding it
and then I'm gonna erase that.
And there you have it.
Carly Rae Jepsen holding a sword.
I'm mostly an illustrator,
so while Photoshop's missing from the App Store,
I found alternative apps like Procreate and CLIP STUDIO
that work for me.
Same goes for the photographers,
designers, and motion graphics artists
on The Verge's art department
who each found their own preferred apps to work on.
But we've asked them to take a look at the new Photoshop
to give their thoughts
and whether they can see themselves using the app.
- What's going on?
It's Alex Castro from The Verge.
I'm an illustrator and designer.
- Hi, my name's Michelle, and I do photo retouching.
- Hi, I'm Will, I'm the design director for The Verge.
- I was able to test out
the new Photoshop program on the iPad.
It was actually really fun
'cause I got to leave my desk and work on photos,
which normally, I don't get to do.
I have to stand at my desk or sit at my desk and work,
but this time, I actually got to pick up this iPad,
go to the couch, sit down,
and I got to edit, which is really fun and really exciting.
- Say you're kind of tracing something
or you're drawing, you can just rotate it.
So, if I'm outlining something,
if I wanna get really close, it's just nice
to be able to turn and color in.
I think we've all grown up coloring on paper,
so we doing something like this is kind of just instinctual.
- As somebody coming from a desktop environment,
using it professionally every single day,
coming to a touch-based UI for Photoshop
is really confusing.
- On the computer, I have a lot of the keystrokes,
the keystrokes that I've memorized,
and here, I don't have a keystroke.
I didn't have a keyboard to use,
and so I had to click around
to try and figure out how do I invert a mask.
And for a retoucher who gets lots of images a day,
time is of the essence.
- So it does have this modifier button
that allows you to toggle
between say, pink brush and eraser.
So, let's say your in the pink brush
and you're coloring in Andrew's hair
and you went too far over,
you can just press, it says erase, and I can just erase.
- One thing I did notice
was my hand got a little bit sore using this pen.
The Wacom pen that I use is a little bit more cushioned,
molds to my hand a little bit better,
but I felt my fingers and my palm
getting a little bit sore with how I had to grip this pen.
- I can see this being very useful in the future
once Adobe adds in a lot of their features
that nobody else can get,
Typekit integration, Creative Cloud integration,
and the mere fact that you can open up
Photoshop files natively on the iPad is huge.
- So I currently use Adobe Sketch and Adobe Draw,
and one of the benefits of that
is that I can save these files as PSD
and they upload right to Creative Cloud,
which is kind of like a Google Docs for Adobe.
Once it's uploaded, I can just go to my desktop,
open that folder, and jump right into PSD automatically.
What's gonna be nice
is I'm gonna be able to work the other way,
that I can save something on the desktop,
save it to the Creative Cloud,
and then I can open it up in the app itself.
Something you can't do right now.
- As for pricing, it's gonna be included
as part of the Creative Cloud bundle,
so if you already pay a subscription for Photoshop
and you've already invested in an iPad Pro, great.
If not, there might be a one-time fee for the app,
maybe another monthly fee, we don't know yet.
And what does this mean for other Creative Cloud apps?
Does this mean that Illustrator and After Effects
could be coming to the iPad someday?
Adobe says it's definitely something
it's considering in the future.
So, that's our first look
at Photoshop for the iPad coming in 2019.
It's definitely not gonna replace your entire desktop
but it's gonna be a really great extension of your workflow.
Speaking of workflow, you can go check out
our newest episode of Workflow in which you can learn
how to make an animated GIF in Photoshop,
which you actually can't do on the iPad
'cause it's not there yet.