Adobe Releases Photoshop Apps for iPad

OREM, Utah — Three new Adobe Photoshop apps have been released for the Apple iPad.

The new offerings — Adobe Eazel, Nav and Color Lava cost between $1.99 and $4.99 and allow users to paint with their fingertips, mix colors and use the iPad as a wireless input surface.

Adobe's new Creative Suite 5.5 was released last week with iPad support for Photoshop, but until now users have not been able to take advantage of that functionality.

All of the apps require Photoshop CS5 (v12.0.4) and are now available in the Apple app store.

Adobe Eazel costs $4.99 and lets digital artists paint with their fingertips and introduces a new kind of interaction between "wet" and "dry" paints. These iPad paintings can then be sent directly to Photoshop CS5 for compositing or for enhancements.

With Adobe Color Lava, creative professionals can use their fingertips to mix colors on the iPad, creating custom color swatches and themes to transfer back into Photoshop for desktop use. The app is priced at $2.99.

Adobe Nav costs $1.99 and increases efficiency by letting users their iPad as a wireless input device. The app lets designers select and control Photoshop tools using the iPad as the input surface, customize the toolbar, browse and zoom in on up to 200 open Photoshop files or create new files.

Industry watchers said the prospect of using the iPad as second screen for Photoshop use and presentations is poised to attract more developer attention.

The new apps are also expected to spark the creation of companion products using Adobe's new Photoshop Touch software development kit (SDK) that's not limited to iOS. Developers would be able to create mobile and tablet applications that interact with Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended software.

Although the new apps are limited to the iPad, the Photoshop Touch SDK allows scripting for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS applications to drive and interact with Photoshop on the desktop.