Chromebooks are amazing machines however you may, sooner or later, wish to run Photoshop again to get some productive graphic work done. Here are three easy ways to get Photoshop on your Chromebook.
Enroll in Photoshop Streaming
Adobe is working on a way to “stream” Photoshop to your Chromebook. And it actually works great! Here’s what they do: Adobe runs the Photoshop software on their computer systems and then they stream that software to your Chromebook. In other words Adobe is doing all the processor heavy lifting, all your Chromebook has to do is receive the stream.
This means that even a $200 Chromebook can run Photoshop well!
Right now Photoshop Streaming is limited to the following people:
- Creative Cloud education member
- Creative Cloud Individual
- Complete Membership
- Member of the Adobe Education Exchange
If you’re enrolled in school (college/university) then your college might offer free membership in one of those programs!
In order to enroll in Photoshop Streaming simply fill out the application form on the Adobe website! You can find it here: https://edex.adobe.com/projectphotoshopstreaming/apply
Use Pixlr Editor instead
Do you actually need Photoshop? Or do you need the basic photoshop features? Before we move onto how to run Photoshop on your chromebook we should ask ourselves: is there another piece of software that will do all that we need it to do?
For the majority of people using Pixlr Editor instead of Photoshop will work just fine. It features all the popular tools Photoshop has and it runs in the browser!
To use it simply get on your chromebook and navigate to: https://pixlr.com/editor/
Stream Photoshop from your PC
All right. So you’ve tried Pixlr Editor and decided that you need Photoshop instead. That’s understandable. Photoshop is much more powerful and features a lot of needed tools for many people, especially professionals.
The next easiest way to get Photoshop on your Chromebook is to run Photoshop on your PC and stream it to your Chromebook. This means that you’ll need a PC (or Mac) running somewhere with Photoshop open and an internet connection from your Chromebook to that PC.
So here’s what you do:
- Install Photoshop on your Mac or PC
- Install the Google Chrome browser on that PC
- Install the Chrome Remote Desktop Extension on that PC. You can find it here.
- Open the Extension on the PC and select “Share this computer for another user to see and control”
- You will get an access code
- Now (leaving the PC running) go to your Chromebook
- Install the same Chrome Remote Desktop Extension on your Chromebook
- On your Chromebook click on “See and control a shared computer”
- Enter the access code you received in step 5
- And bam! You have control of your PC/Mac on your Chromebook! You can run any programs that your PC has remotely on your Chromebook.