Adobe have released a number of mobile apps which were created to make it possible to create edits on the go. While they may not be quite as robust as the desktop version of the software, they do offer a number of editing solutions. Let’s take a look at Photoshop Fix, which allows you to use a number of similar tools within the interface of your mobile device.
Select an image
The first thing you have to do, after downloading and launching the app, is to choose the image you want to edit. At the lower part of your screen, you will see a round blue button with a white plus symbol. Tap on this and a menu will open with the following options:
- A phone icon – load up an image which is already saved to your device
- A camera icon – take a picture and begin editing it immediately
- The Creative Cloud logo – find an image or asset which you have uploaded to the Cloud
- The Lightroom logo – bring in an image from your Lightroom app
- Two interlocking squares with a bookmark – open your Asset Library and browse everything saved there
Choose the option you want and select the image. It should only take a matter of seconds to appear on your screen, though large file downloads may take a little longer.
Note that if you want to return to editing this image later, it will now show up on the home screen of your Photoshop Fix app, along with all of the edits you have made.
Explore the editing options
There are a large number of editing options available in Photoshop Fix, and most of them are recognisable from the main Photoshop program. Let’s go through them now in order to explore each of the options in turn, what they do, and how to use them.
- Crop – the first tool allows you to change the dimensions of your image. You can rotate the image by dragging your finger along the bottom of the screen where you will see a semi-circle listing the degree of orientation. You can also pinch or drag the image to make it smaller or larger within the cropped frame.
- You’ll find more tool options along the bottom of the screen. Use these, in order, to rotate the image by ninety degrees; to flip the image along a horizontal line; to flip the image along a vertical line; and to choose the new dimensions of the image – the crop box on the screen, complete with lines of thirds to help you improve your composition, will change accordingly
- When you’re finished with your edits, tap the check mark at the bottom of the screen (or use the forward and back arrows at the top of the screen to undo or redo your changes)
- Adjust: here you can change a number of attributes, in order as follows: add more or less light by changing the exposure level; increase or decrease the level of contrast; increase or decrease the saturation of the colours; increase or decrease the shadows; increase or decrease the highlights.
- At the top of the screen you’ll see two new icons. The layer icon (two squares on top of one another) allows you to change the opacity of the layer you are currently editing, for a more subtle look. The icon of an image with a line down the middle allows you to see the original image by tapping it, so you can check your changes.
- Liquify: this tool allows you to warp, swell, or twirl parts of the image to change the way they look. These work in ways you’ll be familiar with from the Photoshop desktop app. If you’re working on a face, there’s a whole new tool to use which automatically identifies facial features. Using this tool, you can widen the eyes, tilt them, make them closer together or make them bigger; widen the nose; change the size of the jawline or chin; widen the face; distort the face; make the lips smile more or less, raise the upper and lower lips, or change the width of the lips.
- Healing: your regular spot heal, patch, and clone stamp tools are here. You can also restore the face with one tap if your changes haven’t worked out! This is all done by painting with your finger over the areas you want to edit.
- Smooth: the smooth and sharpen tools are here. Click on the brush tool to change the size, hardness, and opacity of your brush.
- Light: Here you can actually use the dodge and burn tools, although now they’re called lighten and darken. The magic wand structure tool will attempt to identify the appropriate areas to give more structure to your image using dodging and burning.
- Colour: paint on saturation or desaturation, instead of having it affect the whole image
- Defocus: use the paint brush to defocus/blur particular areas
- Vignette: Simply, add a vignette! You can control the colour, radius, feathering, and shape.
Review your image
After doing all of your edits, you’ll find an icon of two arrows pointing away from each other at the top of your screen. This makes the image go full-screen for review. You can also undo recent changes, and share the image directly to your gallery, Photoshop CC, your CC library, Behance, Lightroom, or social media. Finally, the layers icon will merge down all of your layers and make your image ready to save.
There’s no need to use a save button as your progress is automatically saved in the background, so you’re done when you’re done!
This app can make it super easy to complete edits on the go if you’re in a hurry to get a finished image onto Instagram or so forth. You won’t have as much control here as you do with a computer – the painting tools will take some practice if you’re not used to drawing on a screen with your fingertips! – but it’s a good solution to urgent edits.
*Photoshop Fix is not longer available in the App Store. We recommend using the Photoshop Express app as an alternative.