Adobe working on tablet version of Lightroom with RAW support

It looks like Adobe is planning to launch a high-end photo editing utility for tablets, on the lines of its Lightroom software for desktop PCs.

Adobe's Tom Hogarty, who leads the Lightroom team, demonstrated an early build of an app that allows users to edit RAW photos on an iPad 2 in the latest episode of photography focused web video series, The Grid.

Going by the demo, the tablet app offers the ability to edit RAW photos and tinker with elements like exposure, shadows, highlights, sharpness and white balance of the photos, as noted by CNET. It will also allow users to zoom 100 percent to get access to photo focus and other details.

But one of the major features is Cloud synced editing which essentially means that changes made on tablets reflect on the PC. The app uses 'Smart Previews', a feature that was introduced in Lightroom 5 beta, which allows users to make changes to lightweight photo previews while the original RAW files are processed in the cloud and synced to the user's PC, eliminating the need to store large image files on the tablet.

Hogarty did not talk about a release time frame for the app and whether the app would be made available for Android tablets as well. He also did not shed any light on whether it would be part of Adobe's Creative Cloud suite.

Adobe already offers Photoshop Touch for iPad, iPhone and Android, though it doesn't let users edit RAW photos. Although there are some RAW editors available for iOS, they're different from Lightroom's processing model. With Adobe launching a Lightroom-like software utility for tablets, one can expect increased tablet adoption among the photographer community.