If you’re partial to editing images on your tablet, but would prefer something a little more powerful than Lightroom CC, then you may only have a few months to wait for your prayers to be answered.
According to an insider with knowledge of the firm’s plans, Adobe is planning to bring the full version of Photoshop to the iPad sooner rather than later.
First reported by Bloomberg, the move is a response to requests from Adobe users for more tools to allow them to ‘edit on the fly’ rather than being chained to their desktop computers. Adobe is looking into many different ways to capture new users – you may recall its recently announced all-in-one video producing package Project Rush, geared heavily towards those shooting video on mobile.
While iPad sales have slowed considerably in recent years, they are still popular among photographers who find the larger screens make them more useful than a phone for on-the-go editing. While Adobe refused to be drawn on precisely when Photoshop would be making the jump, the firm’s chief product officer for Creative Cloud, Scott Belsky, said he was keen to get cross-platform iterations of Photoshop up and running "as soon as possible."
• The best tablets for photo editing
"There’s a lot required to take a product as sophisticated and powerful as Photoshop and make that work on a modern device like the iPad. We need to bring our products into this cloud-first collaborative era," he told Bloomberg.
Based on this, it looks as though future versions of Photoshop will resemble the current iteration of Lightroom CC in their cross-platform functionality, allowing users to preserve edits between devices and make adjustments while on the move. Indeed, the ultimate notion is for all of Adobe’s products to work this way, with a similar version of Illustrator planned for the future.
Currently the plan is to announce the new version of Photoshop at Adobe MAX, the firm’s annual creative conference, which takes place in October. However, it’s not expected to actually hit the market until 2018, and engineering delays could further alter that timeline.
Read more: Adobe announces Project Rush
