Adobe recently announced some major upgrades to its range of creative products as it bids to turn its Creative Cloud into a “Connected Creative Canvas” by forging stronger connections between its various desktop and mobile apps, most of which have become mainstays amongst creative individuals in both personal and professional capacities. The idea behind the Creative Cloud is that it allows users to share projects or collaborate with colleagues, friends and the wider community online with relative ease and speed, essentially cutting out the middle man when it comes to swapping ideas or transferring projects from one platform to another.
Adobe Digital Media senior vice president Bryan Lamkin said: “Being connected to your assets, team and projects, at all times, is critical to today’s designers. With this Creative Cloud update, Adobe’s signature CreativeSync technology drives powerful connections between desktop and mobile apps as well as essential creative assets.” CreativeSync is a technology that brings together files, photos, fonts, vector graphics, brushes and colours across different devices. It also allows files created on mobile and desktop apps to be saved to a Creative Cloud Library to be shared and collaborated on by anyone who has access to that library.
Adobe has announced plans to turn its Creative Cloud into a “Connected creative canvas” by forging stronger connections between its various desktop and mobile apps
A raft of updates have been announced for the cloud, including two new mobile apps called Photoshop Fix CC and Capture CC, which have been designed to help with retouching and asset capture. The introduction of an optimised mobile version of Photoshop Fix CC means touch-screen image editing is now a real possibility, whereas before it was fiddly and rarely accurate. The Capture CC app, meanwhile, means that features like Brush, Shape, Colour and Hue can be used on original images that have been photographed on mobiles. The company’s royalty free image stock library Adobe Stock will also be offering video for the first time in addition to photos, illustrations and graphics.
Illustrator CC, meanwhile, has been given the Shaper tool, Live Shapes and improved Smart Guides, while InDesign CC has new online publishing capabilities. The 3D modelling software Adobe Fuse, meanwhile, which became available following Adobe’s acquisition of 3D software specialist Mixamo, has now been added to Creative Cloud membership plans so that 3D models can be synced across the cloud and used in Photoshop. Speaking of which, in Photoshop, new art boards mean that elements and layers can be placed more precisely, and there are two new tools called “Design Space” and “Project Comet,” which offers an end-to-end UX design solution.
The Creative Cloud allows users to share projects or collaborate with colleagues, friends and the wider community online with relative ease and speed
On the website design front, the new responsive design capabilities of Muse CC will allow designers to create websites that scale to any screen size, browser or device automatically, and Dreamweaver now has added responsive design capabilities. The company also announced that something called Adobe Portfolio is on the horizon, which will allow users to create portfolio websites that will work across all screen sizes. In all it's a very convincing package, and only serve to underline Adobe as the true kings of the design software market.
