“Photoshop for iPAD SUCKS.” Artists and creatives haven’t been kind to the tablet version of the world’s premier image-editing program, which was released this past Monday. Adobe is being blamed for selling Photoshop for iPad as a fully fledged version of its desktop sibling when it’s actually missing a ton of tools and features. Chief product officer Scott Belsky has called the responses “painful.”
a real-time v1 lesson: you’ve gotta ship an MVP to start the journey, but it will be painful at first. by definition, it won’t please everyone (and if it’s a reimagination of a 30yr old popular/global product, will displease many) pic.twitter.com/LaJ6oJlwcD
— Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) November 7, 2019
The outrage seems to stem from the fact that users felt misled by Adobe’s marketing of the app as “real Photoshop,” a term many took to mean that the app would mirror the desktop experience. To Adobe, Photoshop for iPad is “real”: it uses the same codebase as the desktop app, and files sync between the two so users can keep working across devices. But Photoshop for iPad is far from the “full Photoshop,” which would mean every tool and feature brought to the iPad. For now, only the basics are here.