63 HAPPENING Adobe MAX
EAGERLY AWAITED It was announced at last year’s event, but Photoshop for iPad is finally here
share links with their followers to watch and comment live. Currently being trialled with some users of Adobe Fresco, the Twitch-style move has potential to be of great benefit to educators as well as designer/client review sessions. DUMP THE DESKTOP? So are creatives likely to move en masse to mobile, and mothball their Macs? That could well be a generational thing – 17-year-old Billie Eilish discussed during her keynote how she edited together her stage show visuals using her iPhone, which led to her collaboration on a music video with Takashi Murakami. But it wouldn’t appear to be the direction of travel for everyone. ISO is a Glasgow-based digital media and software studio, designing, directing and building large-scale interactive and immersive media projects as well as TV titles and motion graphics. As such it’s a good place to gauge the real-world impact of mobile content creation tools. “Many of these [MAX announced-apps] are things on our radar to check out,” says designer Mark Breslin, one of ISO’s directors. “They seem very focussed on ‘mobile creativity’ – very much geared at
the Instagram/Snapchat/Tik Tok culture. “I think these might find an audience in content creators, influencers, the general public and so on, rather than designers as such, where I think the default is still working at a large screen or MacBook. I don’t see that much benefit with these apps if your usual workflow is a jump between a desktop and MacBook Pro. “Ultimately it depends what you’re doing,” he continues. “If you invest in a professional shoot, with a crew, you probably wouldn’t be using these tools. If you are on a ‘pro’ job you would use the best ‘pro’ tools you can find. However, if you are quickly grabbing content and doing post on the fly, they could be attractive.” Another of ISO’s directors, Damien Smith, is typical of a modern design pro, utilising a selection of mobile tools. “I usually use my iPhone for site photography and rough video and live on my iPad Pro as a digital notebook, but this is very much for notes and documentation,” he says. “If I was planning to film or shoot something properly, I’d still be investing in pro camera crew, cameras and post workflows. “There is something to be said about the intended scale of final work,” he continues. “If we are creating an architectural
installation, we visualise at 1:1 scale in VR. If you are working on film titles you aim to preview on large scale, projected screens, while for TV, it’s smaller colour-corrected monitors or projection. These [Adobe] tools seem to be focused on their end play form, which in most cases appears to be mobile or social media application.” Having to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) may be another stumbling block to wider adoption, albeit one that Adobe will be used to by now. While the products may appeal to a new generation of artists, that new generation doesn’t subscription. It’s noticeable that most of the competitor apps to Photoshop on the iPad follow a one-shot, often low-cost purchase [or freemium] model. If Adobe is seeking to hook a new generation of mobile-first creatives with its new apps, it may have to think again. “We have noticed in our younger designers and freelancers an underlying mood of discontent with Adobe, especially with the subscription model, and people looking for CC alternatives, like Figma,” says ISO’s Mark Breslin. “This is where we think innovation may come from.” always have the financial security to commit to a tool that requires a
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