November 18, 2011

Adobe Carousel surpasses a million downloads

“On October 27th we launched Adobe Carousel,” writes PM Sumner Paine, “and within a few short weeks we’ve already surpassed 1,000,000 downloads! We’re happy to see such a tremendous response — and want to thank everyone who jumped on board and downloaded the app on their iPhones, iPads and Macs.”

Though the team isn’t yet ready to talk in detail about future plans, check out Sumner’s post to hear about some areas they’re considering.

September 16, 2011

The Adobe Carousel team answers reader questions

How does it work with Lightroom? Who exactly can see my photos? (And where are they, exactly?)

Check out this post from the Adobe Carousel team for good answers to top questions.  You can post comments here, but you’re more likely to get questions addressed via that post’s comments.

Meanwhile, here’s a cute little video they did to capture the zen of the product:

September 12, 2011

Watch Adobe Carousel demoed in the PS World keynote

Check out the multi-user/multi-device functionality demoed by Sumner Paine & Julieanne Kost. They show one-step import, direct capture into Carousel, the Develop engine, sharing ratings, and more. Unfortunately the video doesn’t allow embedding, but the link jumps you right to the start of the demo.

September 09, 2011

Adobe Carousel demo/Q&A recording

For a more in-depth demo of Adobe Carousel, check out this recording of yesterday’s presentation/Q&A session. (Just skip past the first 90 seconds or so of dead air.)

September 08, 2011

My fondest hope for iOS5?

Frictionless camera-to-Carousel hand-off.

I really, really want to think that AirDrop will enable truly seamless integration with Eye-Fi and similar wireless networking/storage cards. Pairing a Wi-Fi-enabled camera with a phone or tablet needs to become as trivial as pairing two Bluetooth devices. Once it’s done once, the camera needs to be able to transfer images the nearby devices anytime, regardless of whether they’re in use, running a special app, etc.

Then–and only then–can we lay to rest the current dilemma: good dedicated camera with laborious transfer/editing/sharing experience, or lousy(-ish) phone camera with immediate editing/transfer? And with the proliferation of 4G phones & tablets, camera->-device->-cloud->desktop will become slick as hell.

Reminder: Photosmith for iPad

I’ve heard a few comments to the effect of “Adobe Carousel looks great, but I really want to pull my raw photos into my iPad, apply flags, ratings, and keywords, and they sync everything with Lightroom on my desktop.” Happily, that’s just what Photosmith ($17.99) already offers:

September 07, 2011

Introducing Adobe Carousel

“Lightroom for iPad” has been the clearest customer mandate I’ve heard in 10+ years at Adobe. Photographers are clamoring to transfer photos wirelessly to their tablets, review & tweak them there, and then sync the results with their desktops.

Adobe Carousel (press release) embraces that vision–and takes it further.  This new app–announced today for iOS and Mac OS X (with Android & Windows versions in development)–brings a highly tuned version of the Lightroom/Camera Raw engine to mobile devices, combining it with excellent multi-device syncing. Key coolness:

• You get access to all your images on all your devices.
• All edits are non-destructive: tweak a setting on one device & you’ll see the edit ripple through your other devices.
• It’s easy to collaborate with friends & family: people you invite to share a photo catalog can view photos, add new ones, apply adjustments and preset “looks,” and flag favorites.
• You can easily publish to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

What does it cost, and when can you get it?  The iOS and Mac versions should be available shortly. The iPad, iPhone, and Mac apps are free, and the syncing/storage service costs $9.99 a month (or $99/year), with a special introductory price of $5.99 a month (or $59.99 a year). Storage & number of photos are unlimited.

When you pay for an Adobe Carousel subscription, you’e investing in one complete solution, enabling you to import as many photos as you want, adjust and improve those photos, and then share those photos with family & friends.

This first version of the app is ruthlessly focused on simplicity & on meeting the needs of a very large group of photographers. As it evolves there’s plenty of room to grow, including adding support for raw file formats and integrating with Lightroom & other desktop apps.

When we introduced Lightroom, we likewise started small, listened hard to photographers, and rapidly iterated based on their feedback. I’m extremely excited to see what develops.

PS–You may know that I’ve been working on mobile imaging apps at Adobe, so can I take credit for Carousel? I’m afraid not: I was the PM early on, helping get things rolling, after which I moved to another effort. More on that soon enough.