Adobe Photoshop is a fantastic image manipulation tool, but it doesn’t come cheap -- today, if you want Photoshop, you can pay $700 for a pro installation, or settle for simple photo retouching tools that only happen to bear the Photoshop name. That may change soon, though, as Adobe’s got a brand-new business model called Creative Cloud.
Adobe plans monthly subscription for desktop apps, announces Photoshop Touch for Android and iPad
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
First, rather than force you to buy programs, Adobe will rent out all the latest versions of its Creative Suite tools for a single monthly fee. Unfortunately, the “cloud” in Creative Cloud doesn’t mean that these programs will run in the cloud -- you’ll have to download and install each -- but rather that Adobe will throw in 20GB of cloud storage and a host of web-based resources.
Second, Creative Cloud also includes access to a set of tablet apps (also available for $9.99 each) including Photoshop Touch, a brand-new version of the image editor which supports layers and a “Scribble Selection” tool which can seemingly figure out what you’re trying to grab from a very rough outline. We’re a bit skeptical about the promises of a fully-fledged Photoshop on a tablet, but it certainly looks hot. Adobe says it can’t tell us how much the Creative Cloud will cost until November, which also happens to be when the new Adobe Touch Apps will arrive on Android devices. According to Adobe, iOS support won’t be announced until 2012. Catch a video introduction to Photoshop Touch below, or head on over to our source link for a full rundown of all the new tablet tools.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
