Adobe Photoshop for Android Support Expanded
Related Class

Adobe Photoshop for Android Support Expanded

  • Published on
by Jennifer Smith
Adobe Photoshop for Android Support Expanded

Adobe systems has announced a key update for one of their Adobe Photoshop for Android products. Photoshop Lightroom version 1.1 for Android is an update to the image editing application. This update to Photoshop Lightroom adds a couple of important features for mobile users that were missing in the original release. One addition is the ability to work with images stored on removable microSD cards. As many mobile device users, whether working on an Android phone or Android tablet, use microSD cards to store images, this is an important addition - or a fix for a pretty significant oversight in the original release of this product. Photoshop Lightroom still requires that images from the Android device be loaded into Adobe’s cloud servers before any editing can occur. So while images can be accessed from the microSD card, no actual editing of the image occurs until the image is uploaded to Adobe’s servers.

Another update included in this refresh of Photoshop Lightroom for Android is the ability to work with Camera RAW files. These are files that store the actual image data captured, and are typically much larger in file size than those stored in the more compressed JPEG (or .jpg) file format. Camera RAW is a favorite format for photo enthusiasts and professional photographers. As Photoshop Lightroom is targeted towards this more sophisticated audience, Camera RAW support is a must-have for Photoshop Lightroom on any platform, and working with Camera RAW files is covered in many of the Photoshop training courses if you want to learn about using this format.

The Photoshop Lightroom app is also available on different tablet and phone devices, such as the iPhone and iPad. A more complete version of Photoshop Lightroom is also available as a stand-alone app for Windows and Mac OS computers, which runs fully on the computer locally - there is no need to connect to Adobe’s servers. Along with these updates to Android, Adobe also announced enhancements to the desktop version of Photoshop LightRoom at the same time.

The release of these apps for Android is part of Adobe’s broader strategy to make their apps available on lower-powered mobile devices, such as the Android Chromebook. Recently Adobe announced a complete version of Photoshop for Chromebooks that runs Photoshop on Adobe’s servers, yet provides control to individual users through a web-like interface. It is essentially remote-controlling a copy of Photoshop running on Adobe’s servers. These efforts by Adobe are a recognition that all the users who may want to access a Photoshop product do not necessarily have the computer power to do so. With this strategy it appears that Adobe will be making more Photoshop products available to those using lower powered Chromebook computers and Android devices. You can find the Photoshop Lightroom app itself or the update in the Google Play Store.

About the author

 is a user experience designer, educator and author based in Boston. She has worked in the field of user experience design for more than 15 years. She has designed websites, ecommerce sites, apps, and embedded systems. Jennifer designs solutions for mobile, desktop, and iOT devices. Jennifer holds a Master of Science (MS) degree in Human Factors in Information Design, a Bachelors degree with a concentration in Commercial Art. When not teaching at American Graphics Institute, Jennifer Smith is an adjunct professor at Boston University.

Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors.She has served as a Designer in Residence at Microsoft, assisting third-party app developers to improve their design solutions and create successful user experiences. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern UX Design, and worked closely with major tech companies to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including XD, Sketch, Balsamiq, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blend for Visual Studio. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.

Jennifer is also an expert on Photoshop, digital image editing, and photo manipulation. Having written 10 books on Photoshop, and having consulted and provided training to major media companies and businesses around the globe.

Jennifer is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices. Jennifer holds the CPUX-F certification from the User Experience Qualification Board and assists others in attaining this designation in leading a UX certification course at American Graphics Institute.