Adobe starts the meeting out by telling us that Photoshop is now free. And like you reading this title, I thought the same thing. But in reality, it’s something else. Photoshop mobile is now free — and that means that the Photoshop app will be actually freemium. Yes, I was just as confused as you are. So let us explain.
Adobe is now debuting a brand new subscription plan called the Photoshop plan. For $7.99/month, you get all the premium features of Photoshop mobile and Photoshop on the web. The plan is tailored to photographers who only work with mobile devices and this has nothing to do with the desktop. It will launch for iOS first and later on this year will come to Android tablets.
The Photoshop mobile app will include:
- Photoshop marquee features
- Layering
- Masking
- Blending
- Tap select: it takes the layer and breaks it apart to everything in the layer.
- Free adobe stock assets
- Commercial safe AI tools powered by Firefly (I cannot confirm that this may also include items from Unsplash or if it’s just from the Adobe Stock assets.)
- Retouching
- Painting
The design of Photoshop Mobile concentrates everything down onto the bottom of the screen and lets you do a lot of pretty fun things. The presenter did a great job of showing us how to make their own custom album cover for a Spotify playlist. As a piece of random artwork that started with a photo as a base, it’s pretty fun. But what I truly wish that they would’ve demoed is an understanding as to why we need technology like this. The new Photoshop Subscription plan is designer for more entry-level folks. However, they, too, need to understand how to use technology to make better photos. Despite how great the technology is getting with Adobe at the fore, the problem here is that I don’t think that these companies are giving us ideas on how we can make them to get better images. In fact, I feel this has been the problem with the last 20 years and it really got to that point with the release of the Sony a9 III.
For that, I wish that Adobe had used someone like the incredible Flora Borsi to show us how to use the technology to make better photos. Sure, lots of photographers love working on their desktop or laptop because of how much extra power you can get. But we totally understand how some folks wouldn’t bother doing that at all. These folks probably do most of their work in post-production instead of working in-camera. And to that end, I think we can probably call them more Photoshop Artists than photographers.
In addition to this, Photoshop for the web is also getting some new features in the form of integration with the Adobe stock library, Firefly Generative fill, generate similar, reference image, access to your Lightroom photos, etc.
We’ve reached out to Adobe for clarification on a few things around the Adobe Stock integration as well as Generative AI. We’ll update this article once we recieve news back from them.