Acquire for Photoshop review

This might be a bit of a short review, as Acquire for Photoshop only really has one feature. And for a quid and a half, that might not sound too special.

On top of its limited use, this is also an app that requires you to have version CS5 of Adobe's ultra-powerful, yet notoriously expensive desktop image manipulation package on your computer.

This is obviously going to narrow down the demographic that would be interested in this app, but considering you're already quite tech-savvy it's not impossible that you don't at least use a commercial version of Photoshop at work. If that's you, read on, because this is actually a very cool app.

There's a feature built into Photoshop, apparently, called Adobe Remote Connect. We say 'apparently,' because we're Photoshop users that had no idea such a feature was there. Then again, there are so many features in Photoshop that you're easily forgiven for not knowing about them all.

Anyway, your computer - with Photoshop - needs to be on the same network as your iPhone to kick thing off. Download the app and fire it up, and things are pretty much ready to go, with almost no setup involved.

Take a photo on your iPhone, or select an existing photo from the Camera Roll, and Acquire for Photoshop instantly pushes that image through to the desktop software, ready for editing, viewing, tweaking or whatever else. It's a secure connection, apparently, though that hardly seems like an issue given that it's using a local network.

The only setup you're likely to encounter isn't actually anything to do with the app. Photoshop, and its Remote Connect feature need a bit more freedom around your computer, so chances are your firewall or security software will require you to authorise this access before the images appear. We had to do this, but only the once. After that, the speed at which the two work together is incredibly impressive.

The Photoshop workspace effectively become a review panel for your iPhone's camera, with photos jumping to the monitor almost instantaneously. According to the blurb, there's also no limit to the number of devices that can send images to a single instance of Photoshop through the Remote Connect channel, so if you've a few people all snapping away with the app, just one computer or laptop can service you all.

As we said at the beginning, that's about all this app does. Nothing fancy, other than its one powerful function. This unavoidably brings its scores down a little, simply because of the criteria, but if the function appeals to you in anyway, then snap up the app.