Adobe Photoshop Express [ Premium ] A powerful photo editor 2020 by onlyharish
Today I want to talk about an app that I use every now and then. It’s a great app for all those quick edits that I don’t edit in Adobe Lightroom Mobile. I’m talking about Adobe Photoshop Express.
This app has been released a while after Adobe retired the first Photoshop Version for iPhone and to be honest, I don‘t know why they called it Photoshop Express; from my viewpoint it‘s more like a Lightroom Express. I guess it was some well thought marketing decision to call the app Photoshop Express.
It seems that the app has evolved from the online photoshop.com service which offered an online (flash based!) version of Photoshop Express. I remember using that a few time probably a decade ago.
Anyway, Photoshop Express allows you to apply a number of different adjustments to your photos. It also comes with a set of predefined „looks“ (aka „presets“ in Lightroom) and you can create and save your own or even „borrow“ a look from a photo that someone posted to the built in Instagram like photo feed.
What can you do with Photoshop Express?
In truth, this app is an extremely watered-down version of Adobe Photoshop, which is quite limited in its functionality. Photoshop Express allows you to perform basic image editing tasks, giving you the option to select a photo from your phone or Adobe Revel, or take one using the device's camera.
Adobe Photoshop Express furnishes you with several useful tools for tidying up pictures or giving them a creative new look. There's an option to crop and straighten images, which includes the ability to flip the picture or constrain the proportions as you resize the canvas.
You can use Adobe Photoshop Express to correct various aspects of a photo, including clarity, contrast, shadows, temperature, and more. Alternatively, hit the Looks button and you can apply one of a number of preset filters to the image, in much the same way as you would with Instagram or Retrica, for example. Many of the adjustment effects and filters are free, though some you'll have to pay for.
Other tools within Photoshop Express include red-eye removal, borders and frames, and a blemish remover. There's an auto-adjustment tool too, if you can't be bothered to tinker around with the image yourself.
Once you're done editing you can save your image to your device or to Adobe Revel, or share it via social media or messaging.
Slide rule
The in Photoshop Express are great for quick fixes or applying instant effects, but not for more complex adjustments or image processing. Photoshop Express is really just designed for quick photo editing on the move. If viewed in this way, it's actually a great success because the user interface is so intuitive.
Most of the editing requires you to move a slider to increase or decrease the intensity of a particular effect or setting. There's an undo feature if you make a mistake, and even a before/after button that you can hold down to see the original image (i.e. before you made the changes).
Good for the basics
Some other noteworthy restrictions, negatives
I’ve been pretty positive about Photoshop Touch, partly because of my moderate expectations with what Adobe could achieve, but it isn’t completely perfect, as there are some restrictions and points of failure that are disappointing.
- This is an iPad 2-only affair. This is probably due to the fact that the iPad 2 is a far more capable device, but it is still disappointing for those on the iPad 1.
- There is a maximum resolution size of 1600 x 1600 for any files you are working on. A little small in my opinion – maybe when the iPad 3 is released, Adobe will increase the limit for those on the new device (particularly if it has a Retina Display)?
- Whilst you are be able to open Photoshop Touch files on your desktop version of Photoshop via Adobe Creative Cloud, you cannot open your existing PSD files on Photoshop Touch: they simply import from Adobe Creative Cloud as a single layer.
- Your files aren’t automatically uploaded to Adobe Creative Cloud – you have to manually tell Photoshop Touch to upload the file. This should happen automatically once you link it to your Adobe Creative Cloud service – which you can sign up for in the Settings.
- Doesn’t use iCloud. I understand Adobe is pushing their own Creative Cloud service, but iCloud would be a nice alternative.
- Scrolling in the app is a little laggy and jarring, it’s a minor point but for an app that is so powerful with graphical manipulation, it is a little odd that scrolling through just the list of tutorials isn’t as smooth as it is in other native iOS apps. This could be related to the AIR nature of the app (Photoshop Touch is also available for Android tablets).
- You can’t edit text after you have saved it to the layer. It does not stay as a text layer, it becomes rasterized instantly.
- As a big fan of Layer Styles in Photoshop on the desktop, I’m a little disappointed that they don’t exist in Photoshop Touch. In particular, it’s annoying that if you want to add a drop shadow, you can’t later edit it, because the drop shadow is permanently painted onto the layer you chose. If you later choose to remove the drop shadow, tough luck, you’ll have to delete the layer and re-add the text or image you applied the drop shadow to.
- Was it necessary to hide the iOS status bar? I guess Adobe wanted to squeeze every pixel of the display, but I think there should at least be an option to restore it.
Instagram-Like Filters with Minimal Adjustments
The “Looks” tool offers a huge number of Photoshop Express filters. To adjust the filter, the manufacturers added a slider, which helps enhance or reduce the selected effect. Examining the tool itself, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality that Adobe Photoshop Express offers.
There are 7 filters available for different modes, like a portrait, a B&W photo or a landscape. However, the number of effects in each mode is quite impressive. There are at least 10 effects in each mode.
There are 4 buttons on the start screen: camera, gallery, Creative Cloud and CC Libraries. The context menu contains information about the application and settings, which has the only “Show Tips” option.
Photoshop Express provides a similar set of tools, namely: Looks, Crop, Corrections, Spot Heal, fix red eye and Borders, but in this editor version, you can also work with text.
Having examined the filters in detail, I saw absolutely the same set, which consists of 7 filters for different modes, each of which has approximately 10 additional effects. With the “crop” tool, I saw a similar situation. All the same features that the tool has in the PC version.
The next tool is “Corrections”, which allows you to adjust the light, tone, exposure, shadows, and other parameters. After selecting the contrast, you will get one slider for more precise settings and auto mode. By the way, in this case, I didn’t like the auto mode. After testing several modes, color correction, shadows, and exposure, I saw that the image was spoilt rather than improved.
The “Spot Heal” tool allows you to blur the background or remove unnecessary objects. I tried to remove the stickers and the pipe on the bus. Just like in the PC version you just need to adjust the slider (my value was slightly above average) and click on the screen in the necessary place. Literally, in a couple of clicks, I got rid of the needless object.
The editor has a huge number of fonts, almost everything that is in the full-fledged Adobe Photoshop CS6. When you select any, you get a slider to adjust the size of the font, colors and layouts.
I was really surprised to see a more precise color setting, namely the color palette. You can manually choose a color, add it to the library, or, as I mentioned earlier, this app is synchronized with Adobe Cloud – download the previously used one, for instance, PC version of Photoshop or Lightroom.
After you have retouched the photo, you can save it to your smartphone or tablet, upload to a social network with added hashtags, send to mail or to Cloud Storage.
Thanks For Reading
onlyharish
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