Photoshop and Illustrator get features for touch devices

Oct 7, 2014 07:34 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella took the stage at Adobe MAX to discuss a series of improvements made to the famous Photoshop tool, adding a new pack of features that make it just better on touchscreen devices and indirectly improving the experience you get on Windows 8 or Surface.

Photoshop thus received several new improvements, including a feature called Playground, which is specifically designed for touch and allows users to manage layers by simply swiping a finger on its main interface. Illustrator also gets a number of enhancements for touchscreen devices, including a new workspace, which Microsoft says is designed for its Surface tablet lineup.

“This new workspace exposes the core tools and controls for drawing and editing, making it super simple to start creating with pen and touch,” Panos Panay, the man in charge with the Surface division at Microsoft, said in a blog post after the event.

Of course, the Surface Pro 3 plays a key role in the experience you get with the new Adobe Photoshop, and Panay explains that everything was designed from the very beginning with Microsoft’s tablet in mind.

“The pressure-sensitive pen makes drawing beautiful curves right on the canvas feel very natural – never before have you been able to just pick up your pen anywhere and draw with the same accuracy as the studio tools you’ve used in the past.”

Photoshop optimized for Surface Pro 3

Panos Panay explained that Microsoft worked together with Adobe to make Photoshop and Illustrator better on a Surface Pro 3, so those who have already purchased Redmond’s top-of-the-range tablet model can start editing photos using touch instead of the mouse.

“The power of touch-enabled, scaled, and pen-optimized user interface for Surface Pro resonated with many of you. Surface is the only tablet powerful enough to run the real-deal, uncompromised creative apps you love, but to date the actual experience of using it has been painful at times,” Panay added.

“The elements of the UI that you needed to touch seemed too small, and the lack of great pen input and gestures felt like an omission on a device like Surface Pro 3 where the pen and gestures open up so many possibilities.”

What’s really interesting is that bringing Photoshop on Surface Pro 3 tablets is a project that Microsoft and Adobe were planning ever since Redmond brought out the new Surface model, but all details have been kept secret until the project reached the final development stage.

“Together, we knew we could make the experience great, and we started this work with Adobe long before the Surface Pro 3 unveiling event in New York City this spring,” he said.

The Surface Pro 3 was officially unveiled on May 20 and comes with a 12-inch screen, three CPU options ranging between Intel Core i3 and Intel Core i7, up to 8 GB of RAM, and a maximum of 512 GB of storage space. Since it’s a real workhorse, the Surface Pro 3 is pretty expensive, so the top model can be yours for about $1,950 (1,500 euro) in the United States.