Ever since I first saw an iPad I thought what a perfect companion it’d be to a desktop version of Photoshop. A convenient input output device with its own processor it may not have the touch resolution of the much more expensive and special purpose Cintiq from Wacom but it is certainly much more command and with multi-touch offers some unique advantages. As of the recent crop of Android tablets the same can be said for the Android platform.

So today Adobe has announced exactly what I’d envisioned. An application development kit (SDK) for building Touch based applications on a wi-fi connected tablet as Photoshop extensions. The first three, Adobe Color Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav are initially only available for the iPad but the SDK will enable development for other platforms such as Android and Blackberry. Color Lava allows paint mixing using your tablet, Eazel is for advanced painting techniques, and Nav assists in navigating the Photoshop user interface.

The SDK not only allows the tablet to be used as an input device, but open documents and other graphical elements can be displayed and used on the tablet. Nav for example allows you to manage all your open documents from your tablet. Nav has another cool feature where it caches your open documents so you can show them to colleagues without needing to save and email them.

The applications, as well as a free patch for Photoshop CS 5 users to allow their use will be available from Adobe on May 3 as part of the release of the upgraded Creative Suite 5.5 (which will be separately priced). As the owner of an Android tablet I’m eagerly awaiting some cool Android versions of these and other applications to allow me to further leverage my Photoshop investment.