Adobe Photoshop Touch 1.4 launches on the Amazon Android-y App Store

While a number of photographers may have complaints about Adobe's pricing of their Photoshop and CS software suites, the complaints are much rarer on the pricing of their mobile flagship imaging product, Adobe Photoshop Touch. Granted, it is nowhere near the complete and versatile product that computer-Photoshop is, but it is a hopeful sign of reasonable pricing. Note that I say photographers. Of the general-population, some people have developed a sense of digital entitlement that every iOS/Android app should be priced at 99 cents or less, regardless. But I digress...

With that as a semi-unnecessary preface, Adobe's mobile flagship product, the $10 Photoshop Touch is now available at the Amazon Android-y Store for the same price of $10. This launch also makes some news, it launches the new version 1.4 of the app/software.

Please note this app is not compatible with all Android devices linked to your Amazon account. If you are not sure, check the Amazon product page while logged on to your Amazon account. It will show you which of your devices are compatible. For example, the 2011 Kindle Fire is not compatible [see screenshot crop on the side]

The app was initially made available for the "real Android", the Google Android Market, with version 1.3 being the latest version there. After Android, Adobe released it to the goldmine that is the Apple iTunes iOS world.

Improvements in Version 1.4
According to the Amazon product page, Photoshop Touch version 1.4 has the following noteworthy changes:

- Optimized user interface for new 7-inch devices
- Smoother brush strokes
- Two new Effects: Lens Flare (under "&" menu) and Stamp Pattern
- Improved grid layout for projects, tutorials, and images
- New support for sharing to Facebook, Twitter, and other registered apps
- Quick access to last 5 colors with new shortcut (drag down on Color)
- Various bug fixes

Mobile devices still not powerful enough (but how long before they are?)
The current iteration of tablets, both iPad and Android, bring even more processor and graphics power compared to the ages-ago-in-digital-time original iPad and first wave of Honeycomb tablets. More power and also more screen resolution and better screen quality.

All these are steps in the right direction, but obviously it is still not enough, nowhere near enough to replace a desktop setup or a dedicated graphics tablet (Wacom, etc) for the professional, working, dedicated, serious, advanced photographer.

We've already seen the first serious attempt at a digital-creative-friendly tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 with its S-Pen and underlying Wacom fundamentals (licensed by Samsung; apparently they saved their copy machines for Apple products, but I digress).

The Note 10.1 is just the first generation, and it doesn't even have the latest computer-y Samsung technology (compared to the Google Nexus 10) [presumably to keep costs from going too crazy?], so there's plenty of work to be done before this can be a serious production system.

Progress moves at a fast pace in the mobile world. How long before these become useful enough for serious photographers to use them rely on them in production environments? [a question; not a prophecy!]