How to use Adobe Photoshop on your Chromebook

A lot of Chromebook users, myself included, have been dying to get hands on Adobe Photoshop on Google’s laptop OS, but it was never possible before. The traditional desktop application was leagues out of a web browser’s capabilities, but as the years passed, Chrome and other browsers became so much more capable. Today, web apps are all the rage, and while apps like Pixlr have taken a dominant stance on the scene for editors and designers, Adobe’s silence has finally ended.

This week, the company introduced Photoshop for the Web, and so far, aside from a few complaints I have, it’s pretty impressive. Most importantly, Chromebook users now have the ability to perform with full editing suite tools right in their browser.

A quick, but important note: These editing super powers do not come without cost. Unlike many PWAs, Photoshop for web costs a heavy $19.99 USD per month. Sure, we’re all unfortunately becoming accustomed to having to pony up some cash for things these days, and subscription services are death by a thousand cuts, but twenty bucks a month is nothing to sneeze at. Most will have to decide if this is a business expense, and it most certainly won’t be a hobbyist tool! With that being said, I’m going to show you how to get to it and how to use it today, so let’s get started.

Open your Chromebook launcher by hitting the Everything key on your keyboard and type in ‘Adobe Photoshop Web‘. Alternatively, you can just click here to get into the portal for Photoshop Web. Once you create an Adobe account and sign in (and well, pay the subscription fee), you’re greeted with a familiar but sleek interface. Those already acquainted with the desktop version will find their way around easily. Simply choose the blue ‘New file’ button at the top right of the window and you’ll be brought to a screen where you can create a new ‘Default’ document and choose your size.

Once editing, the keyboard shortcuts and tool placements are nearly identical to the desktop app, but many things here have clearly been streamlined. This may not sit well with everyone, but aside from the tools being grouped together and the lack of a zoom tool, everything else works great. The brush tool can be selected with ‘B’, for example, and you can change the size with the brackets on your keyboard.

A simple hover over each tool on the left reveals a tooltip to tell you what it is and what it does, and there’s an expand and collapse arrow at the bottom of the left hand sidebar to show you the full tool names. Clicking a tool not only makes it active, but reveals several ‘subtools’ you can swap between. Let’s say, for example, you want to switch from the move tool to the Transform or Crop tool. Those will pop up in a second hand sidebar along with their options as you can see below.

Zooming in, an essential feature for any graphics editor, presents another hiccup. Gone is the straightforward magnifying glass as previously stated. In its place, the unusual combination of holding down the control key while scrolling with your middle mouse wheel. While it feels a tad counterintuitive initially, as with all things new, time might make this second nature, but I still hate it.

Over on the right, you’ll see a layers tab, layer properties panel and even a section for collaborators to leave comments, should you share this document with them. At the top left, just above that toolbar, you’ll see a hamburger menu where you’ll find your familiar tools for creating a new document, saving the current one, exporting, settings, and more.

For the artists wielding a stylus on their Chromebooks, Photoshop Web promises an experience that’s pretty good all things considered. It’s much better than Pixlr as far as pressure sensitivity goes, but now that I’ve had some time with it, it’s certainly not as latency-free as the desktop app for Windows.

Any designs you save here appear in your Photoshop cloud, and you can save them to your PC as well. Because you’re rocking a Chromebook, that means you can save them to your cloud of choice, including Google Drive via your Files app!

There was previously talk about Adobe Photoshop Web becoming free, or rather ‘freemium’ for basic features, with users paying for add on tools and expert options, but that talk has since been killed off, with Adobe itself saying they now have no immediate plans to do so, despite having tested it in Canada earlier this year.

I Just Want the Steps!

1. Open your Chrome browser.
2. Navigate to Adobe’s official Photoshop Web app
3. If you already have an Adobe account, sign in. If not, register for a new account.
4. Ensure you have an active subscription. If not, choose between the available subscription plans and cash out.
5. Dive into Photoshop Web and start editing
6. Don’t forget to turn it into a standalone web app too!

At the end of the day, Photoshop Web is both exciting and frustrating. The future of design on the web is at your fingertips, but it comes at a premium. I hope that anyone who already has a subscription will drop a comment below with their thoughts on the web-based editor. Anyone who is interested in trying it out, just be certain it fits your budget and the goals you have for your business first!