Adobe Photoshop Touch Available for iPad 2

While it was announced back in October of last year (2011), today marks the official release of Adobe Photoshop Touch for the iPad 2, available now in the iOS App Store for $9.99 USD. Mac Stories already has a review up, snagging a copy yesterday when it was briefly online before being taken offline, and then put back up again today.

The reason for it being iPad 2 only is probably based on performance. The iPad 2 is a more powerful platform than the original iPad, complete with better graphics performance and a dual-core processor. Some are wondering if it’s being rolled out now due to the iPad 3 reportedly being around the corner.

Features:
* Has a simplified user interface tailored to iOS/touch.
* Can take advantage of the iPad 2 camera to fill in areas of a layer
* Supports layers, selection tools, levels,adjustments, filters, effects (such as drop shadows, Gaussian blur, etc.), cropping, image resizing, gradients, and many other features Photoshop users are used to.
* Supports AirPrint for printing
* Projects can be uploaded to Adobe Creative Cloud
* Projects can be opened on Photoshop CS5, complete with layers
* Supports sharing images on Facebook as well as the use of Google Image Search
* 13 Step-by-step tutorials

I only have a few issues with it: It doesn’t use Apple’s iCloud, instead using a proprietary cloud service, which you have to manually work with rather than automatic uploading. Text can’t be edited after it’s been saved to a layer, and the layer handling is not the best. It only supports 1600×1600 images. I don’t know if this is due to the display or to memory restrictions. Should the iPad 3 launch with a higher resolution display, better camera, and/or more memory, it will be interesting to see if Photoshop touch takes advantage of it.

Out of those, I think most maybe due to hardware limitations, but using Adobe Creative Cloud instead of Apple iCloud….it bugs me because the Adobe Creative Cloud uploading is not even automatic, but also because I don’t want to have to deal with or subscribe to a bunch of different cloud services. I’m already on a handful, and don’t want to add more.

Requirements:
* iPad 2 Wi-Fi or iPad 2 Wi-Fi+3G
* Requires iOS 5.0 or later
* Size: 50.2 MB
* Language: English

To Purchase/Download Adobe Photoshop Touch:
Adobe Photoshop Touch (App Store) – Adobe Systems Incorporated

Below is a video of it in action.