Photoshop for iPad gets Curves and Apple Pencil pressure settings
When Adobe launched Photoshop for the iPad late last year, users were less than impressed with its limited features – to say the tablet version of the software was a pared back take on the desktop standard was something of an understatement. However, Adobe was quick to reassure digital artists that updates were on their way, and today several new features join those that have been rolling out gradually over the last few months. Adobe Fresco — an already solid app at launch — is also getting an update.
The biggest news for Photoshop on iPad is the much-anticipated arrival of Curves — a core feature of the standard Photoshop experience that lets users make specific adjustments to the tone and color of an image. The first version includes adjustments of tonal curves for all channels, multi-node selections, and useful built-in app recognition of the way you want to tap and drag a node with your finger or pencil or select it. It’s still not quite up to speed with the desktop version, though, and a numerical input function, along with eyedropper tools, will ship in a future release.
When Photoshop first landed on the iPad, users were pretty taken aback to learn there was no pressure sensitivity mechanism for the Apple Pencil, but that’s been fixed in the latest update, too. You’ll now be able to adjust the pressure sensitivity of your Apple Pencil for more precise brushing, cloning, and other effects when using brush-based tools. This means you can brush as softly or as firmly as you want and you’ll produce an effect that’s optimized for the tablet environment.
Over on Fresco, meanwhile, the app has been rounded out with a bunch of new features that Adobe hopes will make it “the best drawing and painting app around.” The eyedrop function has been expanded to support multicolor eyedropping, Capture Shapes (familiar to those that have used Adobe Draw in the past) has arrived in vector and raster, and a new Vector Trim heralds the first of what Adobe says will be a whole set of trim tools in Fresco, making clean-up a lot easier. There’s also a new Mixer brush set, new ruler functions, new keyboard shortcuts and a bunch of bug fixes. Fans of Fresco didn’t have much to complain about to begin with, so these updates only serve to make an already solid app even better.
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