Adobe brings ‘streaming’ Photoshop to Chrome OS, runs over a high-speed network

The Chrome OS is a nice alternative to Windows and Mac OS X if all a user does is check emails, write and edit documents, surf the Web, watch videos, and run some Android apps. But until now, that has been all one could do on Google’s desktop operating system.

Its offerings got a lot richer today, when earlier this morning, Google and Adobe Systems announced Project Photoshop Streaming, a version of the iconic photo-editing software that works on Chrome OS as well as on Windows version of Google Chrome browser. Instead of running natively, the streaming version of Photoshop runs on a remote server connected over the Web. However, since the application is not running natively on the machine, and streaming over the Web, one would need a high-speed internet network, with around 5Mbps data connectivity, and communication lag lesser than 250 milliseconds. “It provides hardware independence with performance comparable to that of a locally installed application. Education IT departments will also benefit since updates become available as soon as they’re ready, and don’t have to be deployed across multiple machines,” said Trevor Bailey, senior director of Adobe’s worldwide education work.

That said, it is yet to be seen how the application performs on a Web browser, and the amount of resources it demands while running the service. For now, Adobe mentions that the service runs in a “virtual environment” and users won’t be able to use features of Photoshop that requires GPU support. However, it does intend to change that soon. There is a catch though, the service is still in its beta phase, and only available to “US-based Adobe education customers with a paid Creative Cloud membership.” For those who are not familiar, Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service was introduced in 2012, and costs $50 per month for a one a one-year commitment.