Thursday, June 19th, 2014 Posted by Jim Thacker

Adobe releases Photoshop Mix, Sketch and Line apps


Photoshop Mix: one of four new free apps released by Adobe, Mix puts more of the features of desktop Photoshop on your iPad – at least if you have a subscription to the company’s Creative Cloud.

Adobe has launched four new free graphics apps for mobile users, including new sketching and drafting tools, and new mobile editions of Photoshop and Lightroom.

The new apps were rolled out as part of yesterday’s update to the Creative Cloud online subscription service, alongside Photoshop CC 2014 and new versions of After Effects and Premiere Pro.

Unlike existing Adobe apps like Photoshop Express and Photoshop Touch, all four are currently for iOS only. Sorry, Android and Windows Phone users: you’re out of luck this time.

Photoshop Mix
First up is Photoshop Mix, a new iOS edition of Photoshop intended for collaging parts of different images – very basic compositing, effectively – with a UI optimised for your finger, not a mouse or graphics tablet.

It’s aimed at home users, but it can export PSD files, and it supports features from the desktop version of Photoshop not present in the existing free Photoshop Express, like Shake Reduction and Content-Aware Fill.

That’s assuming you have a Creative Cloud subscription: Photoshop Mix does all of the heavy lifting for processor-intensive operations in the cloud, leaving non-subscribers with the basic feature set.

You’ll need iOS 7.0 or above, and probably a recent iPad – by all accounts, its a pretty demanding app.

Read more about Photoshop Mix on Adobe’s website

Download Photoshop Mix from the iTunes App Store


Sketch and Line, Adobe’s new ‘social drawing’ and drafting apps, in use with the company’s Ink & Slide hardware: a $200 pressure-sensitive digital pen and ruler set designed for use with a tablet.

Sketch and Line
Next up are Sketch and Line, a pair of related drawing apps. Sketch is described as a “social drawing” tool, which basically means it lets your share your work in progress on Behance, and get feedback inside the app.

It has a range of basic natural media tools – a graphite pencil, an ink pen, two blending markers (brush and chisel tip), and an eraser – and options for tracing or collaging reference images.

You can control it with your finger, but Adobe is pushing its new Ink & Slide hardware – a $200 pressure-sensitive digital pen and ruler set designed for use with the new apps – or Adonit’s Jot Touch stylus.

Read more about Sketch on Adobe’s website

Download Sketch from the iTunes App Store

Line is similar, but designed for drafting, not freehand sketching. Tools include two pencils (2H, HB), two ink pens, (.25mm, .5mm), the two markers, and an eraser, all of which are customisable.

It also offers rulers and snapping to guides; Bezier curves; shape templates; and a workflow for setting up quick two-point perspective.

Again, the UI is optimised for standard touch controls, with gesture support for undo/redo, pan, zoom, scrubbing through the history or changing brush settings; and the app is compatible with Adobe’s new hardware.

You’ll need to be running iOS 7.0 or higher to use either, but Line is more picky about models of iPad.

Read more about Line on Adobe’s website

Download Line from the iTunes App Store

Lightroom mobile
Finally, there’s Lightroom mobile for iPhone, which enables users to sync Lightroom edits made on a mobile device with Lightroom 5 running on their desktop, and which joins the existing iPad edition.

You’ll need iOS 7.0 to run it, and an iPhone 4S or newer.

Read more about the Lightroom mobile apps on Adobe’s website