Photoshop.com Mobile

Available in the app store.

Cost: free

Buy it here: Photoshop.com Mobile

I am an every day Photoshop user, both at work and at home. When I saw that Adobe was releasing an iPhone app, I was tickled brown (not everyone can be pink).  When I saw that it was free, I was extremely skeptical.  I expected a slew of advertising, very little functionality and a paid app in the not so distant future.  After using it, I was surprised to find no advertising and lots of uses.

Here is the home screen.  You start out in "edit" mode as noted on the bottom left.  You can select a photo from your library or take a new photo.

Select Photo

The library interface is pretty standard.  Select a photo.

Editing 01

Once you select a photo the screen changes to show the different editing categories on top and "cancel" "undo" "redo" "save/upload" buttons on the bottom. Canceling brings you back to the home screen.

Editing 02

The first category consists of "Crop" "Straighten" "Rotate" and "Flip".  Your basic image orientation stuff.

Editing 03 - Crop

Crop brings up a four cornered box that you manipulate to set...well, your crop.  Smooth moving interface, but it can be tricky to get the crop box all the way to the edges (especially with fat fingers like me). You may have better luck with one of those capacitive pens, but we are purists and only our fingers will do for a good 'stache.

Once you've set your crop box, press the green check mark in the bottom right to accept the crop or the red circle x in the bottom left to cancel the crop and return to the editing main page. These controls are consistent throughout the editing portion of the app.

Editing 04 - Crop again

The resulting cropped image is very clean.  Put it this way, even if an application has a built in crop tool, I still use PS Mobile for all my crops.  I like it that much.

Editing 05 - Straighten

Straighten is similar to free rotation in the full Photoshop.  A handy grid appears that stays centered and gives you all sorts of guidelines to get the image in perfect vertical or horizontal orientation.  You can rotate at very small increments or degrees so getting that image straight is a snap.

Editing 06 - Rotate

You would think the last effect would have been "Rotate", but indeed not.  The Rotate effect is reserved for 90 degrees at a time.  It is definitely quicker to use when you just need to switch your photo's orientation 90 or 180 degrees.

Editing 07 - Flip

Flip allows you to swap to a mirrored horizontal or vertical orientation.  A quick swipe up/down or left/right achieves the desired effect.  This is the last of the orientation editing tools.

Editing 08 - Photo Controls

I call the second category Photo Controls because these are very typical effects found in most software designed for photo editing.  "Exposure", "Saturation", "Tint", "Black & White", and "Contrast" make the line-up.

Editing 09 - Exposure

Let me pause for a moment and tell you that I really like PS Mobile's user interface.  This is something that Adobe gets right 99% of the time with their software.  Bitch all you want about crashes or buggy software, there's a reason professionals use Adobe software. It's powerful and you can't beat the interface (do I sound like a fanboy yet?)  

For these effects you swipe your finger left and right from center.  The center horizontal position is 0.  As you swipe to the right, Exposure goes from 0 to 60 (increased exposure).  As you swipe to the left, Exposure goes from 0 to -60 (decreased exposure).  This may sound complicated, but is sooo natural in practice you'll wonder why other photo apps don't mimic the interface (perhaps they do and I don't know about it).  All effects that have a grading system of increased or decreased effect use this gesture.

When you have achieved the desired effect, the standard green check and red x buttons save or remove the effect.  

Editing 10 - Saturation

Saturation works with the same user interface.  To the right is increased color saturation, to the left is decreased color saturation.  If you need straight black & white, you can use that effect instead.

Editing 11 - Tint

Tint gives you the color spectrum.  Again Adobe is using effect terms similar to those in it's full software so if you use Photoshop on your computer, there should be a lot of familiarity here.

Pick your color & Tint away.

Editing 12 - Black & White

Black & White is just that.  No grading to the effect so no gesture here, just B&W or not.

Editing 13 - Contrast

Contrast is pretty standard fare and rounds out the Photo Control editing tools.

FYI: if you weren't able to achieve a high enough increase or low enough decrease with an effect, you can layer the effects to get there.  For example, use Exposure twice or even three times to really get that over-exposed look you were trying for.

Editing 14 - Focus

Two of the three effects in this category deal with Focus, "Soft Focus", and "Sharpen".  I'm not sure why "Sketch" isn't grouped with the "Effects" category, but wtf do I know.  

All three are graded effects but different from the Photo Control category.  With the Focus effects, all the way to the left is 0 and as you swipe to the right, the effect increases in strength.  The high number depends on the effect.  Weird to not just use a standard scale of 0 - 100.

Editing 15 - Sketch

It's ironic that I just picked on Sketch, because it is my favorite of the three in this category.  As you swipe your finger to the right, the photo becomes more like a heavily inked illustration ranging from 0 - 42.  YMMV, but I keep it to the far right with this effect.

Editing 16 - Soft Focus

Soft Focus isn't really a blur effect, but it feels like it is trying to be.  The effect ranges from 0 - 254.

I have yet to be happy with it's results.

Editing 17 - Sharpen

Very similar to the effect in the full Photoshop, Sharpen is more useful than Soft Focus (but that's not saying much).  The effect ranges from 0 - 100, with 100 looking somewhat illustrated.

Editing 18 - Filters

And we now come to the last category, which I call Filters.  You have "Effects" and "Borders"  Effects are one shot filters that give you a single result, no grading.  And Borders gives you...(you guessed it) Borders!

Editing 19 - Vibrant Rectangle

Vibrant Rectangle like all of the Filters, gives you a simple white border.  In addition, your image appears to be increased in saturation and contrast.

Editing 20 - Pop

Pop gives you an Andy Warhol type effect with 4 different frames of different tint.  When used sparingly, this effect can be a real winner for you.  It gets boring really fast when you send lots of Andy Warhol pics to your friends.

Editing 21 - Vignette Blur

Vignette Blur fades your photo into the simple white frame.  Boring!!!!

Editing 22 - Warm Vintage

Warm Vintage puts a nice old filter on your photo.  Things are more yellow and saturated with a little blur thrown in for good measure.  I actually like this one, but other apps do this effect better, which I will cover in the final analysis.

Editing 22 - Rainbow

WTF?

Editing 23 - White Glow

White Glow does just that.  A simple white glow all around your photo.  Increased exposure and soft focus.  Not a big fan.

Editing 24 - Borders

Borders is self-explanatory.  A small but ample collection of borders to add to your photo.  I'm glad they at least included a couple of fades and a ripped border.

Editing 24 - Save

When you are done editing a photo, you have two choices for output (by pressing the green arrow going into the computer on the bottom right of the screen).  Your choices are "Save and Exit" or "Save and Upload".  

Save and Exit will put the edited photo into your library and return you to the home screen.

Save and Upload will allow you to upload your edited photo to your own personal online Adobe Mobile gallery.  I normally don't do online galleries thru my apps.  I reserve that for this site or FaceBook, but I'll walk you thru the process.

Mobile Gallery 01 - Join Now!

From the home screen, you can choose "Online" or "Upload". If you don't have an Adobe account or you are not signed in, either of these will bring you to a screen where you can sign-in or Join Now!

Mobile Gallery 02 - Chose a Name

The standard fields need to be filled out, "First Name", "Last Name", "Email Address", "Password", "Verify Password", and "Username".  Yep, that's me, kovokz.  If you see kovokz on the interwebs, chances are, it's me.

Mobile Gallery 03 - Agree to Terms

Gesture down to choose your country.  You can receive updates from Adobe (deselect that puppy), and you must agree to terms & conditions (have to select to get an account).  Press Continue to move forward.

Seriously, does anyone not join a site or service after reading the terms & conditions?  I mean, I know some people actually read all that legal crap, but once you've gotten this far, I don't know anyone that has said "no, I won't agree, I musn't".  

Mobile Gallery 04 - Verification

You get a last message telling you that you must verify your identity by clicking on a link in an email sent to the address you provided.  

FYI: I did this setup late at night.  After an hour, I still did not receive my verification email.  It was waiting for me the next morning, but if you plan on using the Mobile Gallery, don't wait until you need it before signing up. 

Mobile Gallery 05 - Sign-in

After you've clicked on the link in the verification email, you can log into your account in either the "Online" or "Upload" sections.

Mobile Gallery 06 - Gallery Home

You go to your gallery home screen, which should be empty the first time you log.  If you log in thru the "Online" button, then you just see your library and the number of photos in it.

Mobile Gallery - Upload

If you log in thru the "Upload" button, you get a screen similar to the Editing section.  "Select Photo" or "Take Photo".  

Mobile Gallery - Upload2

After selecting/taking your photo you can add a title and description.  If you were editing a photo and chose "Save and Upload" as your output,  you would be at this screen.

Mobile Gallery - Upload3

After choosing to upload the process takes a few seconds (I was on 3G with full signal, but your network choice and signal strength may make this a painful process)

Mobile Gallery - Online

Switching to the "Online" section, I can see that the photo is now in my library.

Mobile Gallery - Online2

The photo appears in full screen.  Whoopee.

Mobile Gallery - Online3

Pressing on the standard Apple "Output" button in the bottom left, you can share the photo with someone special.

You can use your contacts address book to pick an email or just type one in.

Mobile Gallery - Online4

Don't forget the personalized message that will make Cannibal squeal.

Mobile Gallery - Online5

You receive a confirmation message that the email was sent.

FYI: This was the first time that I used the mobile gallery.  It was ok, but nothing fancy. Then I opened the email sent from the app and clicked on the link to view the photo in a web page.  It opened in a web page by itself, very large, huge in fact, and I could view and download the image to my desktop.  That was pretty slick and image quality was excellent.  Props to Adobe for getting the sharing part of the experience right.  Too bad everyone I know that owns the app doesn't know about it or use it.  It would be nice if Photoshop.com Mobile had snap-in output to FaceBook or Twitter.  I would use that feature a lot if it was available.

Settings

The last section of the application is "Settings".  Here you can learn more about the app (still no advertising links), choose to show or hide tips and sign-in or out of your mobile account.

Final Analysis

I use this application for 99% of my 'staches.  It is fantastic for preparing your image for a 'stache application.  Crop, Rotation, Black & White, and Exposure are my most frequent effects. In fact it has been so long since I travelled into the other menus that I forgot how many other effects this app does.  

Then I tried them for this review and remembered why I don't use most of them.  Anything beyond the basic Orientation and Photo Control effects are very weak.  Other photo manipulation applications out there do a much better job of giving you more control over the effect. However, they are usually paid apps and Photoshop.com Mobile is freakin' FREE.  I'm going to say it again to be an a**hole about it.  It's FREE. And it does the basics very well with an intuitive user interface.  That is a winning combination for me.  This app is on my home screen and has stayed that way since I downloaded it.  For free.

My major complaint with the app is that it does not have any of the other Photoshop functionality that made the full application so popular.  I would love to be able to use layers, have an eraser, or brush on some color.  I would pay $3.99 as an in-app purchase for those three functions alone.  Other iPhone apps have tried to implement these functions and when I use them I say to myself "it's no photoshop", and neither is Photoshop.com Mobile in that respect.

Disclaimer:  I may appear to be an Adobe fanboy, but well executed interfaces make me wet. Adobe is usually outrageously priced (IMHO) and beyond the reach of mere mortals to own a legal copy.  The fact that they released a well designed app that does some essential photo manipulation very well at no cost surprises me and I recommend it to everyone, regardless if they 'stache or not.  There is a reason why this app has maintained 3.5 stars with over 17,000 ratings.

And that's my final analysis of Photoshop.com Mobile.