Want to do some serious image editing on a Chromebook? Now you can… maybe.
Adobe and Google have announced that Photoshop can now run on Chromebooks.
There are a few catches though.
Adobe Photoshop will be available to folks using Chromebooks if:
- They’re located in the United States.
- They’re Adobe education customers.
- They’ve paid for a membership to Adobe Creative Cloud.
If you meet those requirements you can apply for access to the Photoshop Streaming beta project so you can use an internet-based version of Photoshop which offers all the same features as a native desktop version of Photoshop… plus a few bonus features. Since the software is cloud-based, it’s always up to date. You’ll never need to install a software update.
Second, it’s integrated with Google Drive. You can save your Photoshop files directly to cloud storage so you can access your images from any machine.
Or you can use a free online tool like Pixlr to edit images, or install Ubuntu on your Chromebook and install GIMP.
I wonder whether this runs natively on Linux server side or perhaps uses WINE. ASP’s don’t like paying for Windows licenses if they can avoid it.
Hmm, this could be the beginnings of a game changer for Chrome if the service catches on… The main thing both Chrome and Android have been lacking up till now is reliable access to high end professional apps…
Though, this still has the limitations of using a cloud based service instead of running a app natively for performance and greater range of flexibility for individual users… Linking it to a Google drive at least allows files to be directly manipulated without the constant need to upload and download makes it more reliable and convenient than solutions like pixlr, as well as giving easy access to Linux users that normally have to go through WINE or stick to solutions like GIMP…
Meeting the requirements and working with a lack of professional hardware, no WACOM or other special tools, may still not appeal to all, however, and even among regular PC users the Adobe Creative Cloud is still a developing service… Similar in many ways to how Office 365 still has to compete with the regular non-Cloud office… the convenience and pricing is still something that has to be factored…
So, we’ll still have to wait and see but this does seem like a promising change…
Watcom tablet support is coming to Chromebooks.
https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/#/c/201207/
Yes and no, there’s support coming but it’s not really full support as it will mainly only allow Chrome to see the peripherals as another mouse and there’s a lot more functionality that still needs to be enabled… but it’s a start…