Adobe Announces a Full Version of Photoshop Is Coming to iPad

As mobile devices like Apple’s iPad Pro continue their surge in popularity, we’ve witnessed an influx of high-quality, desktop-grade creative applications — redesigned exclusively for optimization on iPad — arrive on the App Store.

Titles like Pixelmator and Affinity, for example, are just two of the many powerful photo editing apps you’ll discover on the App Store. Though not quite on par with Adobe’s ubiquitous Photoshop app for PC and macOS, these titles provide a solid photo-editing foundation for professionals and hobbyists, alike.

Those holding out for an even more robust and feature-packed photo editing experience on iPad will be delighted to know that Adobe — makers of the popular digital design software titles for Mac and PC — announced this week that it’s planning to launch a “full version” of its Photoshop app on iPad as early as next year.

The move to bring a full-featured Photoshop title to iPad is part of the company’s broader new strategy — by which it hopes to make its products compatible across multiple devices, thus bolstering subscription sales and revenue, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.

Since 2012, the San Jose, California-based Adobe Systems, Inc., has transitioned nearly its entire library of desktop creative applications over to its new cloud-based subscription service, under the terms of which multi-device users are able to access their Adobe professional software from anywhere on their PC, Mac, or compatible mobile device. 

Photoshop for iPad, however, will be Adobe’s first full-fledged App Store offering for professional photo editors. The company currently offers its Photoshop Mix app for iOS, but there’s really no comparison between it and the full Photoshop experience.

“My aspiration is to get these on the market as soon as possible,” Adobe’s Chief product officer for Creative Cloud, Scott Belsky, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “There’s a lot required to take a product as sophisticated and powerful as Photoshop and make that work on a modern device like the iPad. We need to bring our products into this cloud-first collaborative era.”

Release Date

While he confirmed Adobe’s ongoing development of Photoshop for iPad, Belsky stopped short of providing additional launch details.

Sources speaking to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity, however, specifically indicated the app is slated for an early 2019 release — assuming all the company’s development goals are met along the way.

Bloomberg’s sources also confirmed that Adobe is planning to unveil its Photoshop for iPad app at its annual MAX creative conference this October.