Microsoft wowed the tech world May 20 with an impressive showing of the Surface Pro 3, a device that is designed to kill the laptop. But a computing device is just as good as the software available for it, and that is why Adobe came on-stage to show off a new version of Photoshop CC with some cool touch elements.
Yes, future versions of Photoshop will have a far greater support for touch, and it appears to work well on the Surface Pro 3. This edition is designed specifically for use with a touchscreen and stylus, so folks who love to draw on a touchscreen should feel right at home with what Adobe is conjuring up.
To accommodate fingers and styluses, this version of Adobe Photoshop CC features a large UI for easier access. It also makes use of common touch gestures such as pinch to zoom, swiping and other known gestures. It was great to see it in action; it gives us hope that Adobe will no longer throw all the touch elements to the mobile version of Photoshop, which lacks anything special.
Furthermore, this new version of Photoshop should support high-density displays since it was demoed on the Surface Pro 3.
"Historically, using Photoshop on Surface Pro has been a painful experience, with tiny UX controls and no touch support, but artists have been willing to accept that pain to use the software they need on the device they love. That all begins to change today," says Microsoft on its blog.
Adobe has a long way to go, though, since the company faced issues with Creative Cloud login. Some have switched to the likes of Corel or Gimp because of this, so to get these users back on board, Adobe will have to bring out all the stops to show artists and architects why they need Photoshop CC.
It is possible this new version of Photoshop could find its way to the Apple iPad, but probably with some features removed in order for the app to perform better. Keep your fingers crossed, lads, the unthinkable might just happen in the months or years to come.
The new Photoshop is expected to launch alongside the Surface Pro 3. In addition, both Microsoft and Adobe claim this to be just the beginning of their partnership. We should learn more what this means in the future, but let's hope this means we'll see more advanced Photoshop CC features make it over to Photoshop for Windows 8 RT.
