Adobe Revel for Mac

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on September 16, 2012

If you want to have all your photos easily accessible and synced across all your devices, Adobe Revel is one of the available options. However, while Apple's Photo Stream and iCloud do the same thing for free, you pay a monthly subscription for Revel for its image editing and social-sharing options.

The main role of Revel on your Mac computer, iPhone, or iPad is to keep all your photos organized. We question the need for this, as the native iPhoto already covers this task. Fortunately, the application comes with some enhancements such as basic editing tools and sharing features; you can invite up to 50 trusted persons to join your Revel stream, and they can also upload, download, and even edit your photos.

When you launch Revel on your Mac computer, the first thing you'll notice is that Adobe made the photo editing and browsing experience similar across all platforms, which has its cost. Revel is clearly meant for beginners; it comes with nondestructive preset filters and some basic image-editing functions, and although these features work just fine on a touch-based device, they feel a bit limited on a computer, especially for advanced users.

Overall, we liked the Revel user interface, as it is very intuitive. Each of the limited set of tools is placed in visible spot, so no digging is required. What we liked best was the app's speed; after you select the photos you'd like to have in your Revel library, the sync is almost real-time between devices, making it very similar to Apple's Photo Stream.

Considering Revel's speed, editing tools, and sharing options, Adobe has created a good app that people will enjoy using during the 30-day trial period. Beyond that, the app's required subscription for access reduces its appeal.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Adobe Revel 1.5.