Photoshop for Android is Surprisingly Simple
By: @HilzFuld
When buying a computer, one of things a computer technician will ask you before deciding on the RAM to install, is “What are your computing needs?” Are you a basic Web/Microsoft Word kind of guy or are you going to be performing resource heavy tasks like photo editing? Photo editing and specifically Photoshop by Adobe is a very heavy duty program for your computer. If you would have told me two years ago that you would be able to edit your photos with Photoshop on your mobile device, I would have probably laughed at you.
Well, not only is mobile Photoshop here on the iPhone, it is now available in the Android Market as well, and it is a great little app that will not cost you a dime. Now, before you get the wrong impression, its name is pretty much all it shares with the desktop application, well, that and the fact that both applications edit pictures. The Photoshop app for Android is on the one hand simple and easy to use, while at the same time offering all the basic photo editing features 90% of people would generally need.
If you are a professional photo editor, this app will not replace the software you paid hundreds of dollars for. However, if you take pictures with your phone, and feel that they need some small touch ups like a crop or a focus adjustment, Photoshop for Android will get the job done.
So how does it work? Upon opening Photoshop on your Android phone, you are presented with an initial screen that displays all the pictures on your phone and you can also access the photos you have stored online in your Photoshop account. On the bottom of that screen, you have two options: Edit and Upload. You can select any picture and upload it to your account, or choose to edit it. Once you press Edit, you can select a photo for editing. At this point,the app opens up the edit screen with three icons along the top and four along the bottom.
The top icons are for the editing features. The first icon has functions related to the picture such as Crop, Straighten, Rotate, and Flip. When selecting Crop, you can easily crop out a part of the picture by sliding the grid and focusing on that specific section. As soon you do that, you can either press the check mark on the bottom to save your changes or the x to delete them. To straighten your picture, simply press Straighten and using your finger to adjust the direction of the photo. In each one of these screens, you can press the Android Options button and you are presented with some more options.
When pressing on the second icon, you are presented with a list of options including Exposure, Saturation, Tint, and Black & White. All very useful options and from my tests, they all worked perfectly. The last icon is to set the Soft Focus of the photo, and like the other options, you can use your finger to adjust the focus, or set it by a value in the Options menu.
The app also allows you to view a basic slideshow of all your pictures as well as scroll between them by swiping your finger. Like I said, the app is pretty simple, but very useful. It might not be the same as Photoshop for your desktop, but it is most definitely an app you will be using from time to time, especially given the mediocre cameras on the various Android phones.
Our Rating: 4/5
Developer: Adobe
