Chuck Falzone

Photoshop. For Android. Yes indeed, the premier image editing brand has launched a free app for Android, and without a doubt that is a feather in Android’s cap. But forgetting the big brand name for the moment, how does the app stack up on its own merits? It’s a solid app essential for users of Photoshop.com; not without faults, but a quick candidate for best free image gallery app.

Of course, you can’t install this app expecting all the features of CS4–or the props and word bubbles of PicSay. Photoshop.com Mobile has a fairly narrow focus: it’s a polished gallery replacement that syncs with online storage and has a few editing functions to touch up your photos.

Gallery Replacement
The stock Android photo gallery is pretty spartan, and Photoshop is a big improvement, allowing you to browse through pictures with intuitive swipes and select a batch of photos for a slideshow. The user experience is slick and professional but for one fly in the ointment: it’s difficult to find the photos you want to look at in the thumbnail view.

First, it displays ALL the images on your phone. So to find that picture of my dog I’m looking for, I have to scroll past pointers from My Maps Editor, avatars from twitter and facebook, etc. They’re all lumped together with no options to sort or filter. Exacerbating that problem, the app reloads thumbnails each time you scroll past them–even if they just loaded a moment ago. You end up spending a lot of time looking at a black screen, waiting for thumbnails to load.

Other apps have better ways of handling this. Photo BURST, for example, first shows you all the folders on your sdcard that have images in them. You can then drill down to the images you want to look at. You can also address the issue by creating empty files named “.nomedia” and placing them in in directories that you don’t want gallery apps to index, but that’s not a solution the average user will avail himself of.

Photoshop.com
If you already have a Photoshop.com membership, this app will give you easy access to photos stored there. If you don’t, you’ll need to set up an account to use the app. A free account gets you 2Gb of cloud storage; paid accounts start at $20/year for 20Gb. That’s not a great deal compared to what Google offers with Picasa ($5/year for 20Gb), but hey, free is free.

Syncing with Photoshop.com is where the app shines. As long as you have a data connection, you can browse through photos stored online just like you can with ones on your phone, effectively freeing up SD card space. It’s easy to batch upload photos to Photoshop.com, and an auto-upload option will automatically upload every photo you take. Either way, uploads chug along in the background whether you’re still using the app or not.

Editing photos
Once I figured out that editing functions are not the main point of this app, I was no longer disappointed that there are only nine editing functions: crop, straighten, rotate, flip, exposure, saturation, tint, black&white, and soft focus. No laundry list of crazy filters, just a few tools to make photos look better.

I’d much rather have white balance than tint, but the functions you get are all really well done. Each is controlled with intuitive gestures and many have nice touches. For example, when you straighten a photo, the app also zooms a bit as you rotate, eliminating what otherwise would be empty spots in the corners. In addition, the app allows multiple levels of undo.

Rather than running through each function, I suggest you watch Adobe’s video tutorial. It does a great job of detailing every function of the app.

Other issues

• When you set an image as wallpaper, it just decides for you how to crop it. Results are not always optimal:

• It’s always running in the background, taking up 14K of memory. End it with a task killer, and it will come right back. This sort of thing bugs the heck out of me.

Reviewed Using: G1 running Cyanogen 4.2.3.1
Presentation: One of the most polished apps I’ve come across. It’s a joy to use.
Value: For free, you get a great photo gallery app and 2Gb of cloud storage. If you already use Photoshop.com, it’s a no-brainer.
Stability/Resources: While the app never lagged or crashed, it always runs in the background, coming back like a zombie no matter how often you kill it.
AG Says: While other apps best many of its features, Photoshop.com Mobile fills a niche. Photo BURST is a better gallery with better sharing options, but lacks editing functions; PicSay offers more powerful image editing but lacks the polish of Photoshop. And while full versions of both Photo BURST and PicSay are paid, Photoshop is free and comes with cloud storage features neither of the others offers.
Rating: **** 4 Stars

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You know all those Droid reviews that heaped glowing praise on everything except the camera? All those reports of issues with getting it to focus?

Many sources are reporting that Droid owners awoke to cameras that suddenly worked perfectly today. Was it a silent patch? Did the lens just need a cleaning?

Nope. Google’s Dan Morrill explained that the camera issues have been pinned down to a date-related bug:

There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it’ll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.

The 17th is the start of a new “works correctly” cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.

So, Droid owners, enjoy your cameras while you can, and hopefully you’ll see the issue permanently resolved soon.

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The picture really says it all. Google is obviously fully part of the big Droid launch marketing today, giving it a coveted link on the Google.com homepage.

The “learn more” link leads to a page on Google headed “Search on Droid by Motorola.” The page includes photos of the Droid, a bit of text highlighting voice search, the quick search box and Google’s new turn-by-turn navigation. There’s also a blue box with a couple of links off to Verizon.

These blue-box links might be slightly controversial to some; those of us familiar with these kinds of pages on Google expect those links to lead to other Google.com pages. I found it a bit jarring when I saw that I was heading to the dark, dark land of Verizon.

Edit: I forgot to mention Bert and Ernie. Details are hazy, but apparently Bert and Ernie are either fans or paid endorsers of the Droid. (The previous sentence is not true.)

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Twitter is, uhm, all atwitter with Android developers’ reports of receiving reports from Google of how they did in the first round of the Android Developer Challenge 2.

You may recall that judging for the first round began in late September, and finished up on October 6. Since then, it’s been stony silence, leading to speculation that the whole thing had been scrapped. Complicating matters, T-Mobile rolled out Android 1.6 right in the middle of first round judging, causing issues with users trying to evaluate ADC2 candidates written for 1.5 (per the contests requirements).

But with results from the first round going out by email today, one can assume that the 2nd round will start soon. In round 2, the ADC2 app should become active again, allowing users to score the top 20 apps in each category from round 1. These scores will be combined with those of a panel of expert judges to determine the winners.

Here’s the email being sent out to semi-finalists. By the way, congratulations to ChickenBrick Studios for Project I.N.F. making it through to round two!

Congratulations! Your application ‘ProjectINF ADC’ was selected by Android users as one of the top 20 in the Arcade category! We’re excited that you chose to participate in the ADC 2 and wish you luck in the final round as your application is evaluated by users and a panel of judges.

For full information on the challenge, please see our official site: http://code.google.com/android/adc/

Thanks,
ADC 2 Support

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The phones just keep on coming. A “trusted source” tells Engadget that “Droid” is what Verizon will call its entire line of Android phones, and that the second phone in that series will be available November 6.

And what handset will Droid #2 be? None other than the HTC Desire we recently heard was close to launch. It will be branded as the Verizon Droid Eris.

Details are hazy, but we’d previously heard that the HTC Desire will have Sense UI and is “extremely fast.”

A bit more info on the Desire/Eris is available at gdgt.

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Motorola briefly had detailed specs for the Droid up on its site today. They’re long gone now, but leave it to Boy Genius Report to be there to get all the screenshots.

Some highlights:

• Browser supports HTML5. Hellooo, Google Wave! Can we assume that’ll be true of the Android 2.0 browser generally, not just on the Droid?
• Flash 10 in 2010
• The 5MP camera has a dual LED flash and image stabilization!
• Processor speed: 550 mHz. Five-fifty mega-effing-hertz? Hmmm…
• Color: “licorice w/brown sugar accents”
• “Proximity and ambient light” sensors

Edit: Engadget got screenshots, too. Same info, but better resolution. A few images courtesy of Phandroid.

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