- Adobe has launched a powerful new Photoshop app for iPhones
- The free app also has a paid tier that unlocks tools like Content-Aware Fill
- An Android version is coming "later this year"
Adobe is no stranger to launching Photoshop apps, but it has just launched its most powerful one so far for iPhones – and it's the closest thing we've seen to the desktop experience on smartphones.
The new Photoshop iPhone app, which you can download today for free (with paid upgrades), combines desktop-style tools like layers and masking with Firefly AI image generation. An Android version of the app is coming "later this year".
While Adobe Express will continue to be the company's main Canva rival on smartphones, there is some crossover with the new Photoshop app. Rather than replacing the desktop app, it's been designed to help turn your images into podcast cover art, personalized posters or whatever else you need to look like a creative wizard on social media.
In this sense, the new Photoshop app takes the baton from recently-retired apps like Photoshop Fix and Photoshop Mix, alongside the current Photoshop Express. But it does also go a bit further than those apps, offering some of the advanced tools that are the hallmark of the full-fat desktop app for free.
Alongside layers and masks, the free version offers the Spot Healing Brush, a Tap Select tool to edit specific parts of an image, and lets you dabble with Adobe Firefly tricks like Generative Fill and Generative Expand. If you don't want to use your own photos, you can also start with the free Adobe Stock assets instead.
If those tools aren't enough for you – as Adobe no doubt hopes – then the new Photoshop Mobile and Web Plan ($7.99 p/month, or $69.99 annually) will unlock more powerful tricks, plus access to the browser-based version of the app. We don't yet have international pricing for that plan, but it converts to around £7 / £13 per month or £55 / AU$110 annually.
With that paid plan, you get handy tools like Magic Wand, Object Select and the classic Clone Stamp (which was in the very first version of Photoshop). You'll also unlock extra Firefly tools like 'Generate Similar' to make is super-easy to whip up some fun visuals.
If you already subscribe to Photoshop with Creative Cloud, you'll now get access to this new mobile Photoshop app (alongside Photoshop on iPad and Photoshop on the web). We're looking forward to taking it for a spin soon.
Analysis: Photoshop's biggest smartphone push, but is it too late?
Photoshop recently celebrated its 35th birthday – and with its competition hotter than ever, the influential app is at something of a crossroads.
Adobe launched Photoshop for iPad way back in 2019, so it's about time we got a more powerful smartphone app. But its appeal will depend very much on what you're looking to do.
Rather than trying to cram the full version of Photoshop into a smartphone app, Adobe has created a powerful free alternative to the likes of Snapseed and Pixelmator. Naturally, it's also left out just enough tools to push you towards a (reasonably affordable) subscription.
From our brief first look, it looks like Adobe has successfully translated some of Photoshop's traditional complexity – built around 'layers' for a non-destructive editing process – into a more intuitive, touch-based experience for smartphones. Given the tools on offer, the discounted annual plan could in particular offer decent value.
On the other hand, there's a chance that the new Photoshop app could fall between two stools. I argued a few years ago that Google's AI editing tricks were making Photoshop irrelevant for most people, and since then the best photo editing apps have made Adobe's jumbled approach to offering a mobile Photoshop look like a mistake.
The increasingly ambitious graphic design king Canva snapped up Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher last year in a clear shot at Adobe. And with Apple also recently buying the popular Pixelmator photo editing app, the competition in the AI-powered image editing space is hot.
This competition is good news for us, as it's forced Adobe to create the closest thing so far to a desktop-level Photoshop for our iPhones (and soon, our Android phones). Adobe no doubt also wants to get more people using its Firefly AI image generation, which it brands "commercially safe" because it was apparently trained on licensed content.
Whether that's successful remains to be seen, but for now we're looking forward to spending more time with the new Photoshop app to see how it compares to the best photo editors for smartphones.
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