Adobe Photoshop Comes to the iPhone
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Adobe made a big splash when it unveiled Photoshop for iPad in 2019. While the app took some time to find its footing on Apple’s tablet, it’s at least grown into a reasonable companion to the more comprehensive Photoshop experience for the Mac. Now, Adobe has announced that it’s bringing the Photoshop experience to the iPhone.
While the new Photoshop for iPhone won’t rival the Mac and Windows apps, it offers a robust set of image editing and design capabilities that will satisfy all but the most advanced Photoshop users — especially since it also offers full compatibility with the desktop apps, so you can round trip projects between devices, making edits on your iPhone on the go before returning to your Mac for more sophisticated edits.
To be clear, this isn’t Photoshop Express, which has been around for the iPhone in various forms since 2010, but rather a much more complete Photoshop experience. You naturally won’t get everything the desktop apps offer, but the core features are all there, optimized for the smaller iPhone touchscreen. This includes layering, masking, blending, and even the Firefly-powered Generative AI Fill tool.
The good news is that this also isn’t merely a port of the iPad version. Adobe redesigned Photoshop for iPhone from the ground up to recognize that working on a 6.9-inch or smaller screen fundamentally differs from an 11-inch-plus tablet.
Photoshop for iPhone is accompanied by a new web-based version of Photoshop that lets you access Photoshop from any browser, with all the familiar tools for doing everything from simple pixel-level edits to advanced color corrections and generative AI tools. Like the mobile app, the web version can open the same PSD files to let you work on them from virtually anywhere and save them in a format that can be further tweaked using the full Photoshop apps on your Mac or PC.
We’re excited to bring the limitless creative possibilities of Photoshop to mobile, making the app’s iconic image editing and design capabilities accessible for everyone from professional artists and designers to a whole new generation of creators trying Photoshop for the first time. Photoshop’s new mobile and web apps unlock next generation creativity, empowering creators to bring to life gorgeous photos, rich graphics and incredible art anytime, anywhere.
Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media at Adobe
Of course, Adobe still has a few strings attached. While Photoshop for iPhone offers a generous collection of free tools, more advanced capabilities are locked behind a paid subscription plan — the new Photoshop Mobile and Web Plan, which costs $7.99 monthly or $69.99 for an annual subscription.
Adobe Photoshop is a free download from the App Store. It’s the same app as Photoshop for iPad, now a universal version that runs on both devices. The free version lets you combine, composite, and blend images with core Photoshop tools and features, including layers and masks and also provides access to the Spot Healing Brush, Tap Select Tool, and Generative Fill and Generative Expand.
There’s also integration with Adobe Express, Adobe Fresco, and Adobe Lightroom to incorporate those into your workflow, plus free Adobe Stock assets.
A paid subscription to the Photoshop Mobile and Web Plan unlocks access to Photoshop on the web, provides an expanded set of Firefly-powered features and 20,000 fonts, plus the Object Select, Magic Wand, Remove, Clone Stamp, Content-Aware Fill, and Lighten and Darken tools.
The Mobile and Web Plan effectively replaces the old Photoshop for iPad plan, so users of the iPad version can pay a single subscription to access the app on the iPhone and the web. Naturally, subscribers to the full Photoshop, Photography, or Adobe Creative Cloud plans will get the iPhone, iPad, and web versions at no additional cost.
