A tech enthusiast site called TechHog recently leaked an image of what it says is the upcoming third Nexus-branded smartphone from Google. Though the site’s post has since been pulled, the photo shows a phone with a buttonless design built by HTC and a form factor that slightly resembles that of the iPhone 3GS. If Google wants to ditch the Android menu keys on its next Nexus device — which would presumably run Ice Cream Sandwich, likely eliminating the need for the typical Android menu keys — we’re all for it, but we’re not so sure this particular image is even real. Hit the jump for a zoomed-in portion of the photo that shows a jagged border typically seen when a Photoshopper isn’t careful enough with the clone stamp tool — just one of several problems that leads us to believe the image is not authentic.

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In early April, Adobe took the wraps off of three new applications for the iPad — Color Lava, Eazel, and Nav — and they are all now available in the iTunes App Store. Adobe Eazel is priced at $4.99 and allows you to finger paint and then sync your artwork via Wi-Fi to Photoshop CS5. Nav is $1.99 and allows users to move and view some Photoshop windows, including works in progress or toolbars, on an iPad display. Color Lava is available for $2.99 and it turns your iPad into a palette for creating new colors and custom swatches that can be ported back into CS5. Hit the jump for videos of each app in action.

Adobe on Monday unveiled the latest version of its Creative Suite software, version 5.5, which includes a new SDK for building smartphone and tablet applications that can interact with its famous Photoshop desktop software. To showcase some of the possibilities brought about by its new SDK, Adobe also introduced three new apps for Apple’s iPad. Adobe Eazel is a finger painting app with enhanced controls and nifty multitouch support, and creations can be stored locally or beamed over Wi-Fi to Photoshop CS5. Adobe Nav allows users to move menus and other controls off of their PC displays and over to the iPad. The app also allows users to view Photoshop documents on their tablet displays. Finally, Adobe Color Lava turns the iPad into a modern color mixing palette that pushes color creations directly to Photoshop CS5. Eazel, Nav and Color Lava will become available some time next month for between $1.99 and $4.99 pending Apple’s approval, of course. In the meantime, hit the break for a video of Adobe’s new apps in action.

In a five minute demonstration video posted to YouTube, Adobe shows off a new jaw-dropping tool option designed to make fixing imperfections in photographs drop dead easy. This new “Content Aware” fill technique is dispersed amongst multiple tools including the lasso, magic wand, and the spot healing brush and can be used to seamlessly remove background objects literally with a single click. Watch the video after the jump and prepare yourself to be blown away by what you see.

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A new image of an HTC-branded Windows Mobile handset has surfaced. The source of the image claims it is a rendering of the HTC Firestone, a handset that was included in HTC’s leaked 2009 lineup, and adds the following specifications:

• GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS 900/2100, HSDPA
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• 3.6-inch WVGA touchscreen transflective TFT display, 65536 colors (boo)
• 600Mhz Qualcomm 8250 processor
• 256MB RAM and 512 MB ROM
• MicroSD expansion
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• 802.11b/g
• AGPS
• G Sensor
• 3.5mm audio jack
• 8 megapixel camera
• Target launch: August 2009

Unfortunately, the reliability of the source is unknown and the rendering looks so “2008″ with the older arrow-emblazoned HTC logo and the glossy Touch Diamond design. The mock up is also missing the zoom bar, a key cosmetic feature seen on HTC’s 2009 Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2. Hopefully, this is just an old rendering and not a Photoshop job as we would love to see this handset debut later this summer.

[Via wmpoweruser]

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Moving forward with the Open Screen Project, Adobe has recently released a beta version of an image management app for your phone with Photoshop.com Mobile. While it is still in beta and available on a few devices (those which support Flash Lite 3), it has a lot of potential for picture sharing and editing. For now, options are limited and the application essentially performs one key function: Loading pictures onto Photoshop.com for viewing online or on your phone. Unfortunately, there aren’t any photo editing options via your mobile phone for the time being. Quite frankly, that would prove to be difficult anyway if you’re familiar with even the most basic editing options using a computer. Still, a nice benefit to Photoshop.com Mobile is having tons of pictures at your fingertips without worrying about storage space on your phone. Hit the jump for a quick run through the app and service.

When you open the application, the home screen is very clean and simple. You have the option to view photos on your phone, your Photoshop.com library and the albums you’ve created for your pics. There isn’t much else here, but like we said, it’s still in beta and it looks like Adobe is keeping things clean, simple and easy to use – never a bad thing.

Opening up your library or phone photos shows your pictures arranged as thumbnails. From here, your options are pretty limited. While you can’t send pics to an email address or another phone from here, you can upload pictures to your Photoshop.com library where they can be shared with your friends and family. For now, it’s only an album for your phone and doesn’t do much else.

Here we see the options screen. Short of adjusting your settings, getting help (which you likely won’t need) or checking for upgrades, there isn’t much to be done. The interface is minimal and simple, but we do wish there were more options available such as the ability to create albums from the device or being able to send and receive pictures.

When you go into options from any screen and click on settings, this is the screen you get. Not a whole lot here but the option to sign in or out and to auto-upload photos that you take to your Photoshop.com account. So, if you’re trigger happy and take tons of photos, it would be wise to turn auto-upload on (if you don’t mind sharing) so that you don’t have to go back and manually do so later. Turn your camera on, take a snapshot and the picture is automatically uploaded onto your account. You can even configure the website to share your photos instantly with a handful of other sites such as Facebook. In other words, if you have auto-upload turned on you can literally snap a pic and have it show up on your Facebook page in about a minute. Pretty cool! If you have a phone without memory expansion, this will certainly help so you don’t have to store many photos on your phone and eat up memory. There is, however, a 2GB storage limit with a basic Photoshop.com account. We wish it were a little more, but it is certainly plenty for a free account.

Even if you aren’t tech savvy, there is pretty much no way you can screw things up or get confused within this application. We found the Help screen to be of little use to us given the simplicity of the application. The way Adobe set things up is pretty simple and very intuitive; within five minutes of playing with it we were already comfortable using the app to its full potential.

For such a simple application, you might be wondering, what’s the point? Doesn’t Photobucket Mobile and Mobile Flickr already do the same thing? Well, they sort of do but with Photoshop.com Mobile, you can edit, clean, and touch up your pics right on Photoshop.com and as soon as you save your changes, they are effective immediately on both your phone and the Internet. Anyone who knows about sync knows that this is a feat in itself. Photoshop.com Mobile allows you to make edits and take or upload pics via mobile or online and have it automatically synced between device and computer. While it’s convenient to be able to upload pics to your account with your computer or your mobile phone and have access to it at all times using either device, we were expecting a little more. Again, the ability to edit images on your phone will be very difficult once you get down to details, but adjusting lighting, contrast, sharpness, and the ability to crop should be simple enough and we feel that it should have been included on the mobile app. As we mentioned of course, Photoshop.com Mobile is still in its infancy so expect some big things to come down the road a bit. Still, if you use mobile Photobucket or Flickr and you want the ability to have your phone and online account synced at all times, Photoshop.com Mobile is the way to go – the clean and intuitive interface makes sharing and storing your photos very simple and easy.

It’s a Flash developer’s dream – Adobe CS4 is all about simplified and efficient mobile content development. What this means to all you developers wanting to get in on the mobile device market is that Adobe has simplified life for you and will make it easier to test content designed in Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, Adobe Illustrator CS4, Adobe After Effects CS4, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, and Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 software. Not only will Adobe Device Central CS4 allow you to test such content, but it will speed up the time in which your programs are coded and released for a rapidly growing mobile application market. We mentioned before that Adobe is jumping in on the mobile action and now if you’re a CS3 guru it’s your chance to climb into the market with CS4. The library and wealth of information that will be available allows developers and designers to create and organize all content for specific devices or device types. The new platform will also allow teams and communities of producers, developers, and designers to share information via video, FTP servers, and even Bluetooth to streamline the process that usually causes headaches with mis-communication amongst development teams. All CS4 editions will include Device Central, which is really nice, and is scheduled to start shipping in October 2008. Hit the read link for all the details you can handle.

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