Photoshop.com Mobile review

Damien McFerran

We review Photoshop.com Mobile, an app which attempts to give you the functionality of Adobe's popular image editing suite on the move

Rating:

Verdict: While it falls well short of offering anywhere near as many editing options as its computer-based big brother, Photoshop.com Mobile still performs well and is supported by an excellent image upload service

Platform: Android

Pros: A neat way to touch-up photos while away from a computer, image uploading service is excellent

Cons: The editing tools could be better

Version: 1.0.1

Publisher: Adobe

Price: Free

More Info: Photoshop.com Mobile website

Not matter how competent we believe we are with a camera it’s very rare that you get a totally perfect shot every time; something is always amiss, be it an errant cloud in the sky or someone shutting their eyes at precisely the wrong moment as the picture is taken.

Thank goodness then for programs like Adobe’s world-famous Photoshop, which offers the ability to indulge in all kinds of post-production tomfoolery and turn your near-perfect snaps into unquestionable works of art.

Naturally to perform all of this visual trickery you need a fairly decent computer, but thankfully Adobe has seen fit to expand its Photoshop brand to mobile devices too – albeit with some of the functionality removed.

Predictably, iPhone owners have already been enjoying the portable Photoshop for a while now but it’s the turn of Android fans to experience a spot of “on the move” image editing thanks to Photoshop.com Mobile.

As we’ve just said, your control is somewhat limited when compared to the full “desktop” version of the software. It’s possible to rotate, crop and straighten your images, and there’s even the chance to tinker around with colour balance and tints, but none of the advanced Photoshop techniques have made the transition.

To make up for this disappointment there’s the chance to upload your photos to Adobe’s dedicated Photoshop.com servers, where user accounts are free to create and you’ve granted a generous 2GB of personal storage space.

This element of the app works really well and transferring images to and from the server is a doddle. If you worry about losing your phone with all of your precious photos contained on the SD card, then this backup solution should put a stop all those sleepless nights.

Photoshop.com Mobile’s lack of editing power is understandable when you consider just how hard it would be to perform such tasks on such a small screen without the aid of a mouse, but it still feels like getting a Ferrari and then finding out it can only do 10mph. The Photoshop name promises so much.

However, once you get past this initial disappointment you’ll find that this app becomes a solid addition to your Android phone’s library, and there’s always the chance that Adobe will drip-feed more features in future versions.