The iconic industry favourite for all-purpose imaging squeezes itself onto iOS
Love it or loath it, Photoshop is a towering household name in all purpose graphics editing. A jewel in the Adobe application crown, it continues to represent an industry standard hub within the Creative Cloud community. Photoshop Mix is an attempt to deliver that same imaging-editing excellence to iOS devices, harnessing the graphical power and touch support to bring your compositions closer.
The free app has tight integration with Adobe’s Lightroom for accessing assets, and naturally exports out to Photoshop CC. Consequently this makes sign-in with a free Adobe ID mandatory and although newbies can register in-app, this could be irksome for casual testers. However, given the myriad of image and photo-editing apps readily available, it is this cloud support advanced users will appreciate most.
The work flow implications are massive for art workers on the move and is where Photoshop Mix stands apart. Images can be moved seamlessly across to Photoshop CC as fully workable,masked and layered PSDs. Add in back-up features implicit to CC and you can take comfort that painstaking edits won’t be forgotten.
Mix boasts a non-destructive approach, which is great for maintaining the integrity of potentially precious shots from camera, album, Facebook or Dropbox. Such power over your actions is also welcome given the ease of applying basic adjustments with the preset filters, Cut Out tool and smart cropping. Beyond the one-tap Auto options, Exposure, Contrast, Clarity and Saturation can all be swiped to manually control the effects. This simplicity and refinement over operation is a notable achievement and pays dividends when combining two images or clear layers. In fact, Photoshop Mix is so-called for this overlaying and mixing of photography on the fly, using the Cut Out tool to rapidly isolate areas. Previews are instant and the results impressive enough for simple workings on the move. Some might yearn for image ‘mixes’ beyond merely paired combinations, which is possible by saving down to the Camera Roll and going again.
The fun starts, though, when applying Mix’s CC edits, using cloud processing to perform Upright adjustments, Shake Reduction, Content-Aware Fill and optimised Crops. This delegation of power is not just technically clever but offers potential expansion of tools and features. Consequently, Photoshop Mix succeeds in pack in gamighty Photoshop punch.