We all know the iPhone camera isn't the best, we also know that chances are you take pictures that are good, but maybe need a little help on the improving side. Yep, there is an app for that. But has the imaging software company cracked it, or is this one Adobe app you shouldn't bother to download? 

Our quick take

The Photoshop Mobile for iPhone app is impressive when it comes to editing your images, especially as it is free.

The big catch is that it is isolated to the one service, something that makes this more of an advert for Photoshop.com rather than an all powerful imaging app that will make you dump all the others you've downloaded on your phone.

If that doesn't bother you and you just want a basic image editor with some fun features then you might as well give it a spin, after all it's not going to cost you anything.

Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone - 4.0 / 5

FORAGAINST
  • Easy to use
  • free
  • access your Photoshop galleries
  • save images
  • Can only upload images to Photoshop.com

Available for the iPhone, the app is currently free, however isn't available in other countries like the UK. You can however get it on Windows Phone handsets.

Fire it up and you are presented with three main options: edit a photo, view your online Photoshop.com gallery and upload your images to the service.

Opt for the editing process and you can either select a photo from your camera roll or take a fresh photo to then edit. Once you've got your photo loaded you can then start manipulating it. There are a plethora of options from cropping (1:1, 3:4, 4:3 ratios or custom) to rotating your image to flipping horizontally or vertically.

But it's not just about cropping out the random dude in your photo, Exposure, Saturation, Tint and Black & White are also available to you. All the editing features are controlled via your finger simply by moving it from one side of the screen to the other. The editing process is incredibly easy and luckily Adobe has thought to add a numbering or colouring system to each editing filter so you can achieve the same settings each time on different pictures. You can't punch that in as a number, but at least you can replicate it.

All that's good, but where would a photo editor be without the ability to create crazy image effects? Here you get a range of them. Two - Sketch and Soft Focus - will actually change the image drastically, with the Sketch option making it look like a drawing. The other photo effects are based on colour washes, most of which are fun rather than useful. We can't really see you wanting to "Rainbow" or "Pop" many pictures (see images for example), however used on the right photo and Black & White, Warm Vintage, and Vignette Blur could be very handy.

Once you've created and edited your work of art you can then save it to your Camera Roll as a new image or chose to upload it to Photoshop.com, Adobe's picture service. As you would expect the app gives you access to that space so you can view images stored on the service and you get 2GB free with the option to add more storage at a price.

Uploading is simple but limited as you can only upload your image to the Photoshop.com service. There is no social networking functionality, no Flickr support, no Facebook support, no nothing. It's a shame because if you want to do upload anywhere else you have to come out of that app and then start up another app (i.e., Facebook) to get the job done. It's no biggie, but it would have been nice to have been able to do it from the one application.

With live access to your Photoshop.com galleries you can then bore the world with your favourite images from the palm of your hand and you can play albums and images as a slideshow, but you can't play it back to music or anything.

On the PC or Mac you can access the site via a standard browser.

To recap

The Photoshop Mobile for iPhone app is impressive when it comes to editing your images, especially as it is free