Are you looking for ways to work with PSD files or edit photos on your iPad
and you don't have that Creative Cloud subscription? Well in this video I'm
going to show you my top alternatives to Photoshop on the iPad Pro. Welcome to the video.
Now if you're into design or video production consider subscribing to the
channel because that's what we're all about. Now if you own an iPad and you're
looking for ways to either edit PSDs or kind of have that Photoshop experience
on the go with your iPad and you can't afford the Creative Cloud membership or
you just don't like using it then I'm gonna show you my best alternatives for
Photoshop for the iPad. I've got two free versions and two premium paid versions
and I think the last one is really going to surprise you.
Now if you've used Photoshop for the iPad before you'll know it's pretty good
but it even has some elements which are missing from the desktop version such as
custom brushes, so some of these apps may be the answer for you. So before we
jump in I know some of you are probably thinking "hang on" I didn't even know
Photoshop existed for the iPad! If you didn't know that and you want to see our
full review of Photoshop for the iPad you can click up here and see that
review. Photoshop for the iPad is pretty good, however it is missing some features
So anyway let's jump into our first pick for your first alternative to Photoshop
on the iPad. Ok so the first app is called Pixelmator and it costs just
4.99 okay so lets open up Pixelmator . What's great about this is you can
import PSD files and I'm gonna do that now, so let's import thumbnail which
we're gonna use for this video this is a PSD file created in Photoshop on the
desktop and you can see what's great here you've got all the layers you've
got the option to just color so let's say we want to
adjust the background color here you've got the sort of tool section here we can
adjust the colors there and then we've got some really nice just simple fast
ways to adjust colors brightness all the kind of things you would expect from a
photoshop alternative let's apply that you have options at the top here to
paint an eraser if you want to get rid of any blemishes and photos you can do
that you can retouch you can just or you can add effects crop all of the basic
tools you would expect in Photoshop and I think this is so powerful it's so fast
you've got options for fonts you've got different backgrounds you can put images
and bring those on let's just bring this bottle of spider spray here you can see
how quick it is as we zoom in and out I'm just gonna delete that and then this
text has been brought in from Photoshop so this is one of the only problems is
that sometimes the fonts don't pull in the same fonts font Photoshop but we can
now change this to a different fonts if we go up here you'll see when you go
back to the formatting option now I've selected this text you can now alter all
of the options for the text here so we can change this font and that's changing
to say did an alternative and you can see the phone it's changed there it's
all looking pretty good okay so that's Pixelmator for the iPad now it's pretty
good as you can see the only downside is that I sometimes find when I bring in
PSD files that already have layer text in them they don't always work as I
would expect and sometimes I have to kind of delete the texts that is already
there and then just re-enter it it's not a huge thing to work around but it's
definitely worth noting it so our next app is called Snapseed now this is a
completely free app for iPad OS or iPhone and whilst it doesn't have
multi-layer support it's such a good photo editing app that I had to include
it you know if you just want to edit your photos on the go before you upload
them to Instagram maybe gaps and blemishes you know repair
some photos and then add some text then this is the app for you so let me jump
into that now so if we open up Snapseed here i love about this is you don't
really need the Apple pencil for this you can use your fingers and it works
really really well so let's tap here to open an image let's just open it from
the device I'm gonna go to all photos and let's use this picture of an iPad
now what I like about this it's just so so simple so up here you've got a few
different options this is for some instant looks that you might create
before here you've got your tool selection so let's just say we want to
tune image you do have the option here to improve the details white balance
you've got healing options you've got HDR options and you've got other options
as well for lens blurs adding texts and things like that which is great but why
I like about this app is how fast this is so if we got a tuned image how you
actually go through your setting is through and up and down menu and then
once you've selected the option so let's just say we want to bring the contrast
up you let go and then you swipe left and right and you'll see the bar at the
top here then controls the contrast and so you can see literally let go of your
finger and then you can jump between each section then we go to ambience
let's see a huge difference there so it's just a very very fast way of going
through and editing your photos and as I say I use this a lot when we're out
about on the go as it's just a quickest editor there is lens blur options here
so if we want to add that make a look like we used a really good lens on this
you can add that in there you can tap and hold anyway on the screen to see
their before and after I like that let's tick okay let's add some text easily
even has some kind of Instagram style text effects in here as well so let's
just say you want to add that let's double tap to edit in there iPad pro
10.5" boom and you've got a title there it's pretty good that could go straight
onto Instagram super simple we've edited that photo added some text within a
matter of seconds and there you can export that as a JPEG you can upload it
you can email it do whatever you want that Snapseed in a nutshell okay so the
next app is called affinity photo now whilst this is the most expensive app
I'm gonna recommend to you at 19.99 I think for that one-off payment this is a
seriously good app it has a desktop app and an iPad app and all of the features
on the desktop version are available in the iPad version it's
so good you can clone there's got brushes it's got unlimited layer support
support for CMYK so if you're into print design then this is the app for you so
let's jump into it okay so let's open up the Finity photo now what I like about
this app is that it really feels like a fully functional desktop app it doesn't
feel like a mobile app that's been made for the iPad so what we can do here
let's import from cloud again let's and put that same thumbnail that we were
working on in Photoshop on the desktop and you can see here it's brought it in
absolutely perfectly you've got unlimited layers in a finished photo and
I think that's really really good if you're a kind of a Photoshop person that
uses thousands or hundreds of layers this is the app to go for you know I'm
just kind of creating thumbnails improving photos things like that so
quite basic stuff but it's great that you've got it here you can see it's
brought in the fonts as they should be we can't of edit the fonts here we can
select objects and move each one around independently all the things you would
expect on a Photoshop replacement and you've got loads and loads of type of
typography options you can import new fonts it's absolutely tons of fonts
already installed on the program which is really really great to see and then
from a UI perspective why I like is that you have different personas up here on
the top corner sorry the top left hand corner of the screen now what a persona
is essentially is a way of a sort of simplifying a workspace so you can see
here it doesn't look like there's that many tools down the side here but that's
because we're in just one persona if we change this you can see we're now in the
selections persona and all of the tools now change to selection tools and then
if we go to liquify you'll see this now changes to a liquid liquify persona and
then we can manipulate with the Apple pencil the iPad screen here you can see
we pull that in and it's just so fast you know there's
no lag in this program whatsoever you can also work with CMYK which i think is
a really really great feature so let's create a new project here new document
and as you can see here versus color mode a lot of other apps for the iPad
such as Pixelmator and even photoshop do not support CMYK this does so if you
work on print if you're working on packaging you can now do this within
affinity photo directly within the iPad it just has great selection of brushes
as well you can see here you can scroll through you've got drawing your spray
paint texture brushes everything that you would want and expect from a
Photoshop alternative basically it's really worth delving into there is quite
steep learning curve of this because if you've never used it before it's a
little bit different from Photoshop however I think if you've used Photoshop
before you'll find this quite satisfying to use and they really used the iPad
screen to its best ability it looks absolutely fantastic so that's affinity
photo and I think if you're using Photoshop on a daily basis and you
really need that full selection of tools then out of the four I think this is
probably the best one but the next one I think is going to surprise you okay so
the next app is a surprise for a lot of people who have never seen this before
this is called photo pea calm and it's almost a one-to-one replica of Photoshop
and it's based within the browser so as you'll see in a moment the tools are in
the same place as Photoshop the menus are very similar it's completely free
there is a paid version if you want to get rid of the ads on the side but I
think it's so cool it's very easy to use and until recently until Apple released
iPad OS there was no way of actually accessing this on an iPad because it is
in browser now it has a full desktop version of the Safari browser you can
access it and let me show you how it works okay so let's open up photo P and
all you need to do is type in photo P comm and then the entire application
loads within the browser there's no app to install no program to download and
install it just simply works so let's open the thumbnail that we've been
working on it's open this lets go to browse let's open up the white one what
they've been working on and you can see here it imports just fine there's
multiple layers here on the right hand side just like Photoshop you'll notice
all of the menus and toolbars are almost identical to Photoshop as well so let's
just say that we want to control this iPad here we can move this around we can
go to adjustments and say we want to change the brightness and contrast just
to show you how quick this is you can see there look at that it's adjusting
almost instantaneously and bearing in mind this is doing this through a web
browser I think that's pretty insane so that's pretty cool let's click OK on
that that's just some of this text shall we say let's say
alternative see how easy it is to edit fonts and it hasn't changed our fonts as
well these are the fonts that we used in Adobe Photoshop which is really cool
let's change let's just say let's just make a new background layer and let's
fill in that with it gradient tool and it's done and that's
how easy it is now what I like about this is you can actually import a PSD or
you can export as a PSD as well so if we go save as a PSD you can now download
that thumbnail for dot PSD so this is really really surprisingly good for an
in-browser application as I say it's completely free with page a little bit
of a premium just to get the ads to go away as it fits better within the iPads
UI but this is a great alternative for Photoshop if you're used to Photoshop
you just need to make some quick adjustments you can also use the Apple
pencil too so if we change this to the brush tool now let's make this a larger
brush and then what I'm gonna do is just show you if you draw with the Apple
pencil if I put more pressure on the pencil you can see it's thicker if I
take the pressure away it gets thinner so even though this is going through the
Safari browser you've still got that Apple support for drawing and using
brush tools which is really cool so there you go they are my four
alternatives to photoshop on the iPad what do you think of those let me know
in the comment section below especially if you've got any questions about any of
them I promise I do get back to every single comment so I hope you enjoyed
that video and if you did make sure you subscribe because we have plenty more
videos just like this on the channel so thanks for watching and I'll see you in
the next one