Major and multiple updates were announced yesterday, 18th June 2014, to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Luckily I knew about the livestream and had added the event to my calendar. These are screenshots of the livestream and I’m going to share bits of what caught my attention. ( I love Adobe and their product make my work-life easier. ) Throughout the presentation, I was wondering how nice it would’ve been if I could’ve been there in person. But sometime into the presentation I realized I wouldn’t have popcorn & people would be turning around from their seats to figure out who the loudest shrieker was! It was an awesome presentation.
Above and below were two very interesting slides. In the last five years, the number of people connected to the Internet has grown 1.5 times. The number of people on social networking has grown by a factor of ten. The number of people downloading mobile apps has gone up by a factor of 100 and the number of people with cloud storage accounts has grown by a factor of 250! Crazy numbers!
The major innovations of the last decade : Mobile, Social and Cloud. And innovations of the last decade are usually commodities of the next decade. Adobe is always looking for new frontiers and for them, they have decided, that is “experience.”
The presentation was lead by David Wadhwani who is SVP & GM, Digital Media @Adobe
I switched to the Adobe Creative Cloud many months back when Adobe offered me a trial account. Adobe says that their Creative Cloud already has 2.3 Million members! It’s a great utility in my opinion. Much more convenient that the bloatware software that got updated every 2-3 years and burned a fat hole in your pocket.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, Adobe made a number of announcement for a number of platforms. Desktop apps, Mobile apps and Services were the focus.
I read “Adobe Magic” and immediately my sceptical brain sighed, “Yeah right.” I did expect them to prove me wrong though and I’m happy to report that they did! Even though I was watching the livestream on my laptop, I was also tweeting furiously.
They started with their video apps and showed new things that could now be done within Premiere Pro. I’m new to video, hence I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the new options and possibilities. Judging from the reaction of the live audience though, I can say it was pretty awesome. The presentation then moved to Design and they brought up Photoshop, which is one of my most favorite software ever.
They did some crazy new things within Photoshop and my mind was already blown. You can read about the new features in the new release of Photoshop here. My favorites are the Desktop Fonts From TypeKit and the Focus Mask. Easy peasy! Also a whole lot easier to coordinate work if you work in teams and use the same assets.
Oh and there’s also a Creative Cloud MarketPlace that’s coming soon! You can make in-app purchases of assets like PSD files, icons, artwork etc. Great move by Adobe. No more scouring the Internet for that one legitimate link. I also think the assets will be priced reasonably, which might help the individual artists fight misuse and piracy of their work.
The Design bit of the presentation also talked about 3D and how bringing in a 3D file straight to Photoshop and its manipulation thereof is a whole lot easier. And not just creating 3D objects in Photoshop! Oh no! You can now avail the services of 3D PRINTING using a third-party service where you submit your 3D file, choose what materials you would like your object to be made of, submit and order and they will deliver it to your doorstep. Of course this is currently probably only available to a U.S. audience but my goodness can you even imagine the possibilities? Of course, if you have your own 3D printer, GO NUTS!
The next bit talked about Adobe Muse. While I haven’t used it to build a website, the new features looked quite incredible especially for small business owners. If your website is built in Adobe Muse, you need almost no coding skills and you can update the details of your website using the Adobe Creative Cloud Muse login online. This means you don’t have to hire a developer each time you want to make little changes. This is huge! I’m going to give it a spin for sure. I’m more a Dreamweaver / hand-coder kinda gal.
I was, of course, eagerly awaiting the Photography bit of the presentation and David soon welcome Terry White on stage to introduce some of the new features.
Lots of new things in Lightroom. You can read about the new features in the latest release of Lightroom here. A new Radial Filter, better Noise Reduction, better Upright Transforms were some of y favorites. Lightroom for Mobile is of course insane. Although all their announcements of mobile apps form here on currently only apply to iOS devices. According to the Adobe website, Android apps are in development. I don’t know about you, but I’m waiting with bated breath.
Terry showed how everything was synced via the Cloud and you could edit the original RAW file on your iPad using Lightroom for iPad. THAT. IS. INSANE. And great! Terry also showed how one could see a Before & After of a photograph that has just been edited. Press down with three fingers. Magic!
David then went on to announce a new Creative Cloud plan specifically for photographers. Creative Cloud Photography includes access to Photoshop CC, Lightroom ( for Desktop, Mobile and Web ) and Mobile Sync & Edit via the Cloud. The plan is available for $9.99 per month internationally. For India, the pricing is INR 499 per month and requires an annual commitment. See all Adobe Creative Cloud subscription plans here.
The presentation then moved to new things Adobe is launching for Mobile. And they were ALL kick-ass.
Adobe Sketch. This was a no-brainer really. I’d been wondering why they hadn’t already launched this years ago. The only sketching app I’ve veer used & purchased for mobile is the Autodesk Sketchbook, which is great. Once the Adobe Sketch is available for Android, I will be installing it. And not just because it’s going to be free. Adobe Sketch is already available as a free download for iOS devices!
That watercolor rendering was quite insane as shown in the Adobe Sketch app being used on an iPad. Swipe with three fingers to undo at ANY POINT IN TIME – yes even after you’ve left the app and worked on something else for months.
Adobe also, finally launched some hardware. The Ink and Slide. A digital pen and ruler ( and it blows the conventional definition of a ruler out the window into outer space! ). Again, these are currently only available on iOS devices.
Will you look at that above? Concentric cirles drawn with the help of the Slide on an iPad. Precision drawing. And below? Architects rejoice! Soon enough David also mentioned the words “Photoshop” and “Mobile” in the same sentence and I nearly died. The Adobe Phtooshop Express has been available for Android for a while now but it’s disappointing at best. Of course expecting a behemoth like Photoshop to exist on mobile is somewhat filled with lunacy but one can hope! Instead, Adobe announced something called the Photoshop Mix. Yes you can edit PSD files WITH LAYERS. What it does is that it uses the processing power of the CLOUD instead of using the processing power of your phone / tablet and is hence a whole lot faster. As David mentioned, in most cases, even faster than what your powerful desktop computer can do! In terms of productivity, that’s EPIC.
Another cool thing, in my opinion, that Adobe should have done months ago but has proceeded to do now—never too late—is integration of it’s Creative Social Network BeHance to all it’s mobile apps. You can submit your work directly to the network ( and others like Twitter / Facebook / Instagram of course ). Even though there are millions of people registered on BeHance and using it regularly, a lot of non-creative-field people are completely unaware about it. I’ve been on the platform since October 2007. Yes. But I don’t use it much. Maybe this new integration with Adobe Apps will change my usage patterns? My profile on Behance.Net
To repeat myself, ALL the Adobe mobile apps that were announced at #CCNext are available for FREE download. ( Currently only iOS. )
Another fantastic endeavor is the private beta of the Creative SDK by Adobe for developers. I can only expect huge new things on mobile and web. A creative persons’s wet-dream!
By the time the #CCNext presentation ended, I had seven new updates on my Creative Cloud subscription! Hitting “Update All” didn’t take a second thought. ( Although I did not check my Creative Cloud desktop app during the presentation because I knew I’d be tempted to update immediately and that would have meant bad quality on the livestream. Indian Internet speeds are still light-years behind most of the developed world. )
Isn’t this the first time Adobe has announced so many awesome updates that are available to existing customers immediately and FREE? ( Well of course it’s a subscription-based service but it’s still a momentous FIRST TIME EVER! )
I don’t usually watch livestreams and keynotes and I was glad I was able to take out time to watch this one. It was great on all fronts and I’ve lost count of the number of times I whooped with joy, shrieked “YESSSS!” and exclaimed “OH MY GOD!” I hope I didn’t wake up the neighbors!
P.S. My first professional speaking engagement is with Adobe India on the 26th of June at Bangalore as part of the Adobe Photography Symposium 2014 – if you don’t know about it yet, go see the link!
All Adobe-related stories on the Naina.co blog here.
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4 comments
This really does look like a major update. Time to upgrade – thanks for taking the time to write this.
Hey Arjun! I usually don’t take software update announcements seriously but I’m glad I made time to watch this. Quite a lot of neat new stuff 😀
It all looks pretty impressive, I’m currently on CS6 and mainly use PS and Lightroom with occasional Premiere. The CC Photographer pack (PS and Lightroom) looks like a great deal, but will I be missing out on much if I don’t get the full CC as the extra money is quite a lot.
Thanks 🙂
Hi Mark, yes the full CC is extra money. The CC Photographer pack might be suitable for people who purely operate on Photoshop and Lightroom but most of us, these days, handle a lot more than just picture-making. I use Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Photoshop and a little bit of Premiere. For me, the full CC package is not much because of the amount of utility I derive. Thanks for stopping by!
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