Interview: Elise Swopes on the New Adobe Photoshop Mobile App
The first digital artist for iPhone reimagines the creative workflow with advanced AI tools and accessibility
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Interview: Elise Swopes on the New Adobe Photoshop Mobile App
The first digital artist for iPhone reimagines the creative workflow with advanced AI tools and accessibility
Adobe has introduced the power of Photoshop to mobile devices, providing both professional professionals and budding artists with an easy-to-use platform for on-the-go photo editing and design. The new Photoshop iPhone app—soon to be launched on Android—offers features like layering, masking and AI-powered tools—all optimized for mobile workflows. This innovation gives creators the power to pursue their vision anytime, anywhere.
Mobile Photoshop is highly anticipated, and in our opinion, it’s AI-powered tools that allow it to thrive on small touch screens. Manually creating an image mask pixel by pixel, especially with a finger, can be tedious, making features such as tapping to select the material useful. Seamless access to Adobe Stock and the integration of Firefly’s production capabilities open up a wide array of image options, empowering users to enhance their photography or visualization and combine anything they can imagine.
Elise Swopes, who has spent 14 years creating art on the iPhone and now works at Adobe, played a key role in the app’s development by sharing feedback and insights. He also hosts many demo videos, like the one above explaining the layers. Friend of CH, we had a great time sitting down with Swopes to talk about the app.
Why is Photoshop coming to the iPhone now?
We know that many people use their phones, from well-known creators to aspiring ones. Now, we’re ready to introduce Photoshop to mobile in an accessible and intuitive way. Allowing people to have knowledge and expertise about what a layer is, what masking tools and selection tools are, and access to Firefly with generative and generative fill, is a huge opportunity. They also have access to over hundreds of thousands of Adobe Stock images that are all commercially safe. This is a good opportunity because there is a hole that has not been closed until now.
How did you participate in the creation of the app?
About 10 years ago, I was part of a program called “make it on mobile” as a freelancer, which was when we released the iPad version. Three or four years ago, I was invited to the San Francisco offices to give feedback and ideas about what might be next, mainly because of my background. In the past year and a half, since I’ve been at Adobe, I’ve been put in a room to give feedback and my personal advice on how we should move forward.
How does this new app improve your workflow?
100%, especially when it comes to Adobe Firefly. There are many materials used that help me to think and create quickly, and create features and images that I could not access before, only with stock. But the biggest thing for me now is that I can print my artwork. I can blow up my artwork because it actually has high resolution, unlimited layers and all the different capabilities for me to go back to the mask and adjust where I never could before. In the combined 14 years, I have had to redo all the editing because I had to combine my layers, and because I had to limit the file size, because I had to go ahead and add one layer, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t add another layer because the resolution was too much. So I didn’t have those restrictions here.
Is there anything you are currently working on, or have recently done, that is particularly exciting?
I like to pride myself on having a certain style. The fact that I can access all these stocks at will, without downloading them to my phone, has allowed me to start playing with collages, vision boards, different types of album art. I mean, there are so many limitations that I was dealing with that now I can have a little more fun and not worry about different places on my phone. So I would say that the biggest thing I really enjoy is the different look books and collages and all that fun stuff. I can really think outside the box more than I always have.
Do you have any words of wisdom for someone who might want to work with Photoshop for iOS for the first time?
Start with what you have. I started as a dropout with zero money, but I had a broken iPhone 4, and I started creating in the app and a bunch of different apps, of course, they limited me, but now that I have the same access that I have for free with this app, who knows what else could have happened, but I started where I had with what I had. Wait for that perfect moment to start. Create with what you have. We have an undo button and a redo button for a reason. If you don’t know what something does, touch it and hear how it feels. See what it does, see how it reacts. If you don’t like it, undo it. If you like, save it and move on to the next one. We have masks and layers and adjustment layers and all these things so you don’t have to think too much about what you just did. You can always go back and delete it and start over and be happy with it. So we have these amazing opportunities now to really express ourselves, to start where we are and just be creative.
What makes you happy the most?
The great thing about this is also helping to educate people about the potential future of what they might be using. We truly prepare people for a successful future to use even greater applications like Photoshop for web and desktop, After Effects and Premiere. The whole suite really prepares you to understand these different features and tools and keep upgrading and growing.
The Photoshop mobile app is available in the Apple App Store, with an Android version coming later this year. The free app offers premium upgrades through Photoshop Mobile and the web app. This program includes additional features on mobile and iPad as well as access to Photoshop on the web. All current paid Photoshop plans already include access to Photoshop on the iPad and Photoshop for the web.
