Adobe to Release Photoshop.com Photo-Sharing App for Windows Mobile
In addition to its desktop-software announcements, Adobe is introducing a new mobile service designed to make it dead simple to upload images from a Windows Mobile smartphone.
If you’ve been looking for an easier way to get your camera-phone images posted onto the web (or wanted to do a bit of light editing before posting something to Flickr), the company’s new Photoshop.com Mobile app might be the answer.
The software, which requires FlashLite and will be released as a public beta in September, allows you to upload, back up and share your photos from a Windows Mobile smartphone. The initial release will support six mobiles: Samsung Blackjack I and II, the Palm Treo 700 and 750, and the MOTO Q 9h and Music 9m; the company says support for Android, iPhone, Symbian and RiM BlackBerry devices will be coming in 2009.
The Flash-based Photoshop.com Mobile app greatly simplifies the task up uploading images from your phone. In fact, you won’t need to do anything to upload an image to Photoshop.com — point and click to capture the shot, and in about 10 seconds the photo shows up in your online gallery, where it’s ready to be shared. You have the option to simply upload your photos and keep them private or to upload and instantly share your images through a personalized Photoshop.com URL.
While the app will automatically upload your images to Photoshop.com as soon as you take them, to pass them on to other sharing sites like Facebook or Flickr will require a separate trip to the browser (or desktop software if you’re using it). But once you log in to your Photoshop.com account, adding your photos to another service is as simple as dragging a thumbnail over to a folder on the left side of the screen marked “Flickr” and letting go.
Adobe says it’s working toward an update that will allow you to upload images with other services directly from the mobile app, but it won’t be available for the initial release.
Other features in the mobile app include full access to your Photoshop.com library and albums on your phone, as well as the ability to turn off the automatic upload service for those images you don’t want to upload.
While the iPhone has made it pretty easy to send photos to Facebook and Flickr through specialized apps, the experience just isn’t as simple on other phones. And while almost all photo-sharing services offer upload via e-mail features, the process isn’t nearly as simple as using a dedicated app. A gap exists for nontechnical users, and that’s the gap Adobe is hoping to fill with Photoshop.com Mobile.
The public beta will be available as a free download at mobile.photoshop.com at the end of September. We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as it’s ready to download.
