This is What Adobe’s Cloud-Based Version of Photoshop Looks (and Works) Like

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Two months ago, we told you that Adobe and Google were hard at work bringing Photoshop to the browser. Essentially, this version would run off of a server, allowing you to use as weak of a machine as you like, since the program isn’t relying at all on your computer’s processing power.

Up till now, that’s really all we knew, but after two months of testing Adobe has pulled back the veil and given us a sneak peek at what ‘Streaming Photoshop‘ — as the program is called — actually looks like.

The long and short of it is that, as Ars Technica puts it, “Streaming Photoshop looked like… Photoshop. That’s probably the best praise you can give it.”

After getting a demo of the software, the tech site explained that the experience is just like the desktop version, albeit with some features like 3D manipulation still absent for now.

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The program works by opening Photoshop on a remote machine and showing you the program window as a video feed that is, supposedly, “indistinguishable from a local install.” It then pulls your files off of Google Drive (Creative Cloud support coming soon) and lets you edit by sending your clicks to the remote machine using JavaScript.

Because your computer is doing none of the heavy lifting, Adobe is confident even the $200 Chromebooks on the market today could handle Streaming Photoshop no problem… as long as you have enough bandwidth (4MB/s optimal, 1MB/s minimum).

The other caveat is that, as you can see from the press images, you’re going to be running a Windows version of Photoshop. No matter what OS you’re on, since the remote computer is running Windows, you’re running Photoshop in Windows.

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Streaming Photoshop is still only available to Educational Institutions, and there’s still 6 months of testing left in this pilot stage. But even six months from now, don’t expect a full commercial release.

According to The Verge, Adobe will open up to a broader audience once it’s comfortable, and then, later, make this a full commercial release. For now, the purpose of Streaming Photoshop is to give educational institutions with low end hardware the capability to use PS. In that, it seems, they’re succeeding in spades.

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