Adobe Photoshop for tablets looms nearer
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch demonstrates an iPad-based color palette app used to mix, select, and paint colors. It's attached to a separate computer computer running Photoshop. — You can't download Photoshop for your iPad yet …
Context & Ripple Effects
Kevin Lynch's iPad color-palette demo lands mid-arc in Adobe's 2010 push beyond the desktop: August brought a redesigned, membership-free web-based Photoshop Express, October an HTML5 Video Player widget built for uneven browser support, and this week Adobe also confirmed a cloud service for sending large files and a web tool that converts PDFs online. Against that backdrop, the demo reads as a deliberate step rather than a one-off experiment.
What Adobe has shown is a companion app — an iPad mixing and selecting colors for a separate computer running Photoshop — while a full tablet version remains unconfirmed and undownloadable. The open question the demo leaves hanging is whether Adobe ships touch interfaces that extend desktop Photoshop, or holds out for a native tablet editor.
First-order effects
- Adobe's demonstrated architecture keeps the heavy image processing on the desktop, positioning the iPad as a touch controller for Photoshop rather than a standalone editing machine — so creative professionals get touch color work now, but still need a PC or Mac in the loop.
- Buyers hoping for tablet Photoshop have nothing to install yet: the product is unconfirmed, leaving the free web-based Photoshop Express as Adobe's only directly usable tablet-era editing option in the meantime.
Second-order effects
- Apple gains under either outcome — a tethered app pulls iPads into creative professionals' workflows, while a native version would pull harder — so pressure builds on Adobe to move past companion apps before lighter tablet editors claim the slot.
- Adobe's same-week cloud file-transfer and online PDF launches supply the missing connective tissue: moving large working files between devices is exactly the problem a tablet-to-desktop Photoshop workflow has to solve.
Third-order effects
- If companion-first is Adobe's shipping pattern, professional creative tools will trail tablet hardware by design, and the length of that gap determines whether the iPad's creative market forms around extensions of desktop suites or around purpose-built touch-native editors.
- The deeper structure visible across 2010 — Photoshop Express, the HTML5 widget, file transfer, online PDF processing — is Adobe rebuilding around services that sit between devices, which would make any eventual tablet Photoshop a client of that layer rather than an isolated app.
The trend: Professional desktop creative software is approaching tablets through tethered companion apps first, with native versions gated on both touch hardware maturing and Adobe's nascent cloud services carrying the file workflow.