Adobe Photoshop Touch review

Adobe has, for some time, sold the cheaper Elements version of its Photoshop image editor for home use, and now there’s a third option: Photoshop Touch for the iPad. Unlike many other photography apps on the tablet, this isn’t designed to simply apply colourful filters to snapshots – although it can do that. Instead, it gives you a few of the tools you’d expect from an image editor on a PC.

First and foremost, you get access to layers. This allows you to build up photos and text on top of one another, tweaking, adding or removing any changes quickly and easily. The advanced layer controls found in Photoshop CS6 (£670) are missing – this app costs less than £10 – but layers are still useful to have.

The remaining tools focus on image editing rather than painting. Two dropdown menus give access to a range of quick photo filters, including black and white, saturation adjustment, curve adjustment and effects ranging from blurs to radical ‘painting’ styles. Another menu includes editing tools such as crop, rotate, gradients, fades and warp.

You can also add text, choosing from over 20 fonts, resizing and positioning the results on screen easily with a finger, so it’s simple to create photo messages to send via email. All projects are saved in an editable form with layers and can be exported to the iPad’s Photos app or shared via email or Facebook.

Photoshop Touch is easy to use and a great tool for experimenting creatively. If you have photos stored on your iPad then it can be a useful way to spruce them up for the web quickly. There’s just one setback, though – even the very latest version of this app does not take advantage of the new iPad’s high-resolution Retina display, which would be brilliant for editing snaps from its upgraded camera. While this is a good app for iPad 2 users, new iPad owners should wait for an update before buying.