iPad 2 photo apps from Adobe

Adobe just released its "Adobe Photoshop Touch" app for iPad 2, and it's making me wonder: Could I possibly leave my laptop at home on my next trip? I'm dubious, but let's take a look. Here are a few lovely screenshots that I took of their screenshots from the app store:

So, it looks like the perfect thing for:
1. fanciful collages of androgynous hat models who like balloons, butterflies, and roses
2. cheesy faux-vacation photos to try to convince your friends that you totally were hanging out in weather-inappropriate garb with that blond girl from English class and No! That's not the photo from the school paper because in this photo you have your eyes opened.
3. psychedelic representations of that time in New Mexico when you were guided through a desert by a talking chameleon.

Sold! Only $9.99 for all that?
But seriously, what does it really mean?
Some of the features are:

• layers, selections, adjustments, filters—obviously, not in as complete a way as the $699.00 Photoshop CS5, but what do expect for ten bucks?
• a "camera fill" feature that sounds a bit like the content-aware fill that I love so much.
• ways to select and extract "even hard-to-select image elements, like hair, with ease" by scribbling. Really? 'cause it's not so easy to do with Photoshop CS5. 
• the ability to use Google image search and download images
• sharing and viewing stuff on Facebook with comments from within the app
• integration with "airprint"to wirelessly print--although I can't seem to find that app
• integration with Adobe's creative cloud, which should come as no surprise since the $50 a month cloud fee pretty much gets you everything you could ever want.

And finally....the "feature" that has annoyed app store users the most (based on looking at the comments):

• 1600 x 1600 pixel maximum image resolution.

What does that mean in inches? Well, at 72dpi (i.e. on a typical screen) it's a whopping 22.22 inch square photo. But at a print resolution of 200dpi, that's a modest 5.33 inch print. This leads to comments like "can't consider this a pro app" and "our cameras are 8+ on our iPhones we need full support for that!" In fairness, 1600x1600 pixels makes a 7.32 mb file, so it's pretty darn close. Still...a "pro app?" I don't think Adobe claims that it is. It talks about "pro effects," but no one can reasonably imagine all the features of a $700 program for $10.


conclusion:
We're not to the point where I can leave my laptop at home, not with a Canon 5D Mark II's large files.  Besides, my iPad couldn't even handle an hour's worth of shooting, let alone processing.

However, if you are like most of my students, all of your photos go on Facebook, blogs, etc. And the photos you post are not 22 inches big online. For that, the 1600x1600 pixel limit is more than enough. It wouldn't surprise me if that limit went up in some future version once the iPad 3 has been out for a while. For blog posts, Facebook pics, and so on, Adobe Photoshop Touch is a pretty exciting development and I will probably end up getting it just for fun. It's certainly in a different league than most photo apps for the iPad. Adobe is adding new apps to their "Adobe Touch apps family" faster than my fellow Utahns are having kids. No wonder Adobe is building a new 230,000 square foot facility in Utah.