Adobe releases three new iPad apps, Color Lava, Nav and Eazel

Alongside the release of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 update today, Adobe has released three new iPad apps. Adobe Color Lava, Nav and Eazel for Photoshop CS5. Color Lava is a color mixer that allows you to mix colors live on the iPad, Eazel turns your iPad into a painting tablet for Photoshop and Nav acts as a toolbar and file browser.

Adobe Nav for Photoshop

Adobe Nav uses a network connection to your computer to act as a file browser. You can browse, reorder, view and zoom up to 200 documents at a time on the iPad. Then just tap a file to make it the active document in Photoshop. You can also load files up on the iPad, disconnect it from the network and share those files away from the office.

In addition you can also customize a set of tools that you commonly use to be displayed on the iPad, allowing you to choose them with a tap.

Adobe Eazel for Photoshop

Eazel turns your iPad into a canvas with the ability to paint documents in photoshop with your fingertips. You can choose colors, blend wet and dry paint and the effects appear in Photoshop.

The way that Eazel handles the tool palettes looks absolutely fantastic, better than any iPad painting app I’ve seen.

Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop

Color Lava looks to be a solid addition for digital painters as well, with a focus on mixing colors until you get the perfect color. You can then transfer the color back to Photoshop to paint with. I’d estimate that this one will be used along with a traditional stylus and tablet for digital artists.

As anyone who’s used the color picker can tell you, subtle color variations are hard to come by. I really like the way you can save your color choices and export those to the color picker.

The whole setup looks absolutely fantastic and I’ll be playing with all of these apps to give you a full review. They haven’t hit the App Store in every region just yet, but when they do I’ll update this article with download links.