Pixiq

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced the availability of a trio of Adobe Photoshop Touch apps – Adobe Colour Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav. The apps are available for Apple's iPad, and they developed as a showcase for the new Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit (SDK), demonstrating the potential for new interaction between Photoshop and tablet devices.

Adobe Colour Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop and Adobe Nav for Photoshop unite the fun and interactive experience of touch devices with the power and precision of Photoshop by enabling users to create custom colour swatches, paint directly onscreen and drive popular Photoshop tools from tablet devices. These applications take advantage of the iPad's touch screen for a truly immersive, tactile, on-the-go experience, and expand upon inroads made by Adobe in the mobile and tablet market initiated with Photoshop Express, Adobe Ideas and Adobe Connect Mobile.

Photoshop is a part of the recently announced Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 product family, enabling designers and developers to create for popular and emerging smartphone and tablet platforms. Current Photoshop CS5 owners can download a free update to enable new interaction between Photoshop and tablet devices.

Nifty stuff - but no doubt Wacom & co are keeping a close eye on the recent developments - of course, the Wacom pads have a series of features that the iPad can't yet copy (like pressure-sensitivity), but a lot of designers already have an iPod in their box of tools, and with functionality like this at their fingertips (literally...), the expense of a art pad might be harder to justify.

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