Adobe launches Photoshop on iPhone (properly) for the first time

Adobe has just dropped a new Photoshop app for iPhone users. (Android is coming "later in the year".) And trust me, this is really big news for designers.

That said, if it hasn't set your pulse racing, and it sounds a little like deja vu, then we're not surprised. Adobe is very much the software giant that cried wolf when it comes to Photoshop on handheld devices.

I've written scores of pieces over the last 10 years or so with similar sounding headlines. Remember Photoshop Fix? Photoshop Mix? Photoshop Express? All mobile apps that promised to bring the magic of Photoshop to your phone. So what's different this time?

Well, in a nutshell, this time Adobe are doing it properly. The free version of the app includes capabilities that would have been unthinkable in a mobile application just a few years ago: layer compositing, masking, selections and the Spot Healing Brush—staples of the professional Photoshop experience.

You can also use the app to access Adobe's Firefly-powered AI tools, including Generative Fill and Generative Expand. We'll leave you to decide whether that's a good or bad thing: Adobe still seems blithely unaware that for many creatives, it's stomping into frenemy territory with all this generative AI stuff.

Standalone experience

Most significantly, Adobe are not positioning Photoshop for iPhone as a companion app to the main software. Instead, they're selling it (literally and metaphorically) as standalone software, which is a big departure from previous Photoshop-titled mobile apps.

In this light, the launch of Photoshop on iPhone—which coincides with Photoshop's 35th anniversary—feels like a timely one, if not highly overdue, given the increasingly mobile-first approach of many designers today.

For those accustomed to working across multiple devices, meanwhile, the integration with Adobe's ecosystem promises to be seamless, with projects easily transferable between mobile, desktop, iPad and web versions of Photoshop.

What does it cost?

The new app can now be downloaded from the App Store, and offers both free and premium experiences.

The premium tier, available through a new Photoshop Mobile and Web plan priced at £6.25 per month or £55 annually, unlocks additional professional features including Object Select, Magic Wand selection tools, Clone Stamp, Content-Aware Fill, and advanced blend modes.

If you're already a Creative Cloud subscriber, don't worry: you'll get all of this for free. However, there are plenty of people who aren't, and so the combination of a free version and relatively affordable premium features seems like a smart move for Adobe; potentially luring in people who'd balk at the cost of a full Creative Cloud subscription.

Interestingly, Adobe has indicated that this mobile-first philosophy will continue to guide their product development, suggesting that similar transformations may be coming to other Creative Cloud applications.

It's early days of course, and it'll be interesting to know how useful designers will actually find the new app in practice. But whether it becomes the primary workspace for tomorrow's designers or simply an extension of existing workflows remains to be seen, its potential to reshape design practices seems intriguing to say the least.