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What is Adobe Eazel?
Adobe Eazel is an iPad painting app that allows you to connect directly to Photoshop over WiFi and send your paintings to Photoshop at four times the resolution . It offers a watercolor-like painting experience with a unique user interface which is navigated by gesturing with all five fingers.

Cost and Compatibility: $4.99. Requires iPad running iOS 4.3 or later.

Photoshop connection requires Photoshop CS 5.1 or higher.

Adobe Eazel Pros:

• Image resolution is increased when transmitted to Photoshop.
• Paint stays "wet" for a time, allowing colors to mix.
• Innovative controls activated by touching all five fingers to the screen.
• No user interface elements clutter the workspace.

Adobe Eazel Cons:

• Only supports one work in progress at a time.
• One level of undo/redo.
• Only one brush available (round).
• No layers.
• No indication of how long paint stays "wet."

Adobe Eazel Description:

• Adobe Eazel simulates wet paints that mix and blend like watercolors.
• Tap all five fingers on the screen to display tools, then lift all but one finger to make adjustments.
• Connect directly to Photoshop and transmit your canvas at four times the resolution (2048x1536 pixels).
• Save canvas to device photo library as 1024x768 JPEG.

Using Adobe Eazel

Adobe Eazel is the first painting application to utilize the new Photoshop Touch SDK for allowing mobile apps to communicate directly with Photoshop. Eazel shows a lot of promise--the user interface is unlike anything I've seen in a mobile app so far--but as far as features go, it is quite limited in its initial release version.

Eazel's user interface is completely hidden as you are painting, which allows you to utilize all of the canvas for your art work. The user controls appear when you touch all five fingers to the screen, and then each of the five fingers adjusts something different. Lift all but your pointer finger to change color, the middle finger to adjust brush size, or the ring finger to control opacity. The pinkie finger displays settings, and swiping with your thumb allows you to undo, redo, or clear the canvas. You can also can also tap all five fingers on the screen and lift them to leave the controls displayed, then use any finger to adjust the setting you choose.

The paint quality in Eazel is also unique to other mobile painting apps in that it behaves like watercolors, where the paint stays "wet" for a few seconds, allowing colors to blend and bleed into each other as you paint over previous paint strokes. Unfortunately, there is no indicator for when the paint is wet or dry, so it takes some practice to learn how to your paint strokes are going to behave in Eazel.

Although Eazel is quite innovative in its interface approach and paint engine, it is very limited in features. There is one brush style, there are no layers, you can only have one canvas in progress at a time, and there is only one level of undo and redo. Most limiting, in my opinion, is the inability to work on more than one painting at a time. Although Eazel does have the ability to send the canvas to Photoshop, who's to say you won't have more than one concept you want to develop before you get to a location where you can connect to Photoshop?

When you want to send your work to Photoshop, touch the screen with 5 fingers, then lift all but your pinkie to show the "Transmit to Photoshop" button. This requires that you have Photoshop CS 5.1 (Photoshop 12.0.4) or higher running on a computer on the same network, and that you have enabled the remote connection within Photoshop. When the Photoshop connection is active, the Ps icon in the lower right corner will turn blue, and your painting will be instantly transmitted to Photoshop where it opens as a transparent layer in a new document at a resolution of 2048x1536 pixels.

Although I love the interactivity with Photoshop, I don't care for the painting experience in Eazel. Judging my the sample Eazel artwork I've seen online, it can be used to create stunning images, but it wasn't enjoyable for me to work with. I'm more looking forward to what the Photoshop Touch SDK will bring to other more developed mobile painting apps.

Some may say Eazel is primarily an app for showing off the interaction with Photoshop, but Adobe has put a $4.99 price on it. Considering its limitations and competition, I think that's a bit much in its current state. If Eazel were a free app, I think it would make a much better showcase for the Photoshop Touch SDK interaction and a better way to inspire other mobile painting app developers to take this technology farther.

Adobe Eazel in the iTunes App Store

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