I was impressed with the initial release of Photoshop for iPad as a mobile companion to the desktop workflow. I dismissed the criticism regarding lack of features as premature as Adobe seemed to be planning a rollout of features in a measured fashion. I’m convinced the iPad and cloud based image storage is the future of our photographic workflow and Adobe is working on being a player in the space. Lightroom and Photoshop will be available as mobile tools, adapted to the mobile environment.
In a blog post, the Adobe iPad Photoshop team has provided a bit of a preview of what they call “The Journeyâ€. I’ll admit that I’ve been around long enough to appreciate just how long it takes for the journeys. Way longer than anyone wants. In June 2007, the iPhone was introduced. There was no app store. Just a few native apps and the browser. The first iPad was 3 years later- and appeared to be a big iPhone. It’s the iteration over years that builds capacity and I find it easiest to follow along on these journeys, building skills as the capabilities of the system improve. Photoshop on the Mac is my native language for image processing. I can translate it to several other workflows pretty well, knowing where I’m going and learning how a new tool may work to get me there.
The promised addition of curves will provide an essential part of the workflow because I use it as my method of selective change in tone and contrast. Pressure sensitivity for masking will also be a big step toward reproducing my Mac workflow. Other steps in Photoshop are via the NIK set of filters, unlikely to be integrated into an iPad workflow anytime soon so finished product will still be in the full digital studio, not the mobile setup on iPad.
Nevertheless, this looks like the road ahead and should help get the pictures out and being seen here and on social sites.
