Hasta La Gadget!

Overpriced and underpowered, Carousel v1 fails to compete with Photo Stream

Adobe has released Carousel, a suite of multi-platform apps that let you share and edit your photographs on any device you on, seamlessly. If it sounds familiar, that’s because its a lot like a pro version of Apple Photo Stream.

Carousel runs on iOS devices, as well as the Mac, with Android and Windows versions on the way. Any photo you add on any platform will be almost instantly mirrored. Edited photos are re-uploaded and then re-synced across devices.

Editing is simple and straightforward. Whilst it’s not the Lightroom Lite we were hoping for, you do get a small subset of Lightroom’s editing tools. And these are nicely organized. You can adjust a slider to change white balance, for example, but when you hit the little arrow next to the slider, you get the option to adjust temperature and tint separately.

It’s well put together for a 1.0, and does one thing that Apple’s Photo Stream can’t: delete photos.

However, it has a lot of barriers to use. First is that it costs $6 per month (there’s a free 30-day trial), compared to the free Photo Stream. Second, you have to manually add pictures to the Carousel library. Third, it’s currently JPG-only, so no PNG screenshots and no RAW files (Photo Stream does both).

Complete integration is perhaps Photo Stream’s biggest strength. Any app that can write to the camera roll automatically joins the game (even Carousel, ironically). Apple’s pro apps (I’m looking at you, Aperture) are crowded and nard to use, but when it comes to making the simple stuff easy, it’s hard for others to match the convenience.

Carousel is available now in the Mac and iTunes App Stores.

Adobe Carousel [iTunes]

Adobe Carousel [Mac App Store]

See Also:

• Holy Moly! Adobe 'Lightroom' for iOS
• Photo Stream