Adobe Will Finally Debut Illustrator for iPad Next Month

Adobe Illustrator Ipad 2020 Credit: El Output
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Adobe has yet to release its highly-anticipated iPad version of Photoshop, but apparently the company already has its next Adobe CC iPad app on the roadmap.

According to Bloomberg, the next app that Adobe is working on bringing to Apple’s popular tablet is its key graphic design app, Adobe Illustrator.

While Adobe has not commented on its plans, sources have tipped off Bloomberg that the company plans to preview Illustrator for iPad at its Adobe MAX conference next month, the same event where it announced Photoshop for iPad last year.

Illustrator for iPad is expected to follow the same trend started with Photoshop, unifying the desktop code base with the iPad version, and thereby providing a “real” version of Illustrator for tablet users.

The move continues the partnership between Apple and Adobe to position the iPad as a viable computer replacement for creative professionals, especially those who prefer a more touch-and-stylus based user interface.

Adobe Illustrator is one of Adobe’s most popular apps in its Creative Cloud software suite, making it a logical choice as the second app for Adobe to tackle bringing to the iPad.

Realistic Expectations

There is likely a need to set some proper expectations on what this means, however. When Adobe announced that “real Photoshop” would be coming to the iPad, many professional users immediately assumed that meant the full Photoshop experience would be arriving on day one. Recent reports, however, have suggested that this is not the reality of Photoshop for iPad, at least not for the initial release.

That said, however, Adobe Photoshop — and likely Illustrator after it — will be “real” in the sense that they share the exact same foundations. Adobe is not “porting” Photoshop and Illustrator to the iPad, but is rather developing a common foundation for an app that will run on both devices. In other words, Adobe’s CC apps for the iPad will have all of the exact same underlying code as their desktop counterparts — it’s figuring out the different user interface design that is the real challenge.

Most importantly, however, Adobe Photoshop will provide full compatibility with PSD files on day one, and it’s safe to assume that Illustrator will do the same for AI files. This means that while users may not have all of the same tools in the iPad version as they do on the desktop, it will be trivial to round-trip the files between the two platforms.

Adobe is “Genuinely All-In”

According to John Gruber of Daring Fireball, “multiple reliable sources” have confirmed that Adobe is aggressively serious about delivering Photoshop for the iPad.

What I’ve heard, from multiple reliable sources, is that Adobe is genuinely all-in on Photoshop for iPad. They view it as a serious, top-shelf project for creative professionals. The team of engineers working on it has grown significantly from a year ago, and they have plans to add features iteratively on an aggressive schedule.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball

In fact, considering the challenges in properly adapting all of Photoshop’s myriad features to a touch UI, it was probably wishful thinking from the beginning to hope that Photoshop for iPad would deliver 100 percent feature parity in version 1.0. However, if the sources who have spoken to Gruber are correct — and there’s no reason to believe they aren’t — Photoshop for iPad will not only ultimately deliver everything that the Mac and Windows version does, but Adobe is also taking the time to make sure that it does it properly, rather than throwing together a haphazard UI just to check off a box that says it’s “feature-complete.”

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]

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