Adobe Launches Major Upgrade To Creative Cloud

Taking aim at inefficiencies that slow down the creation process, Adobe today launched major updates to its flagship Creative Cloud tools and services.

The release includes dramatic new features in Adobe’s flagship applications, performance enhancements across Creative Cloud (CC), and exciting updates to Adobe Stock — including deeper integration within CC and the addition of an all-new Premium collection of high quality stock content. Spanning across virtually all of the Creative Cloud portfolio, updates in this new release target many of the pain points that designers, photographers and filmmakers face every day.

“We have two key goals with this release: saving our customers time and helping them jumpstart their creative engines,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Media at Adobe. “Every creative project starts with a blank page and ends with a vision coming to life. Today’s release of Creative Cloud will help make that journey as fast and productive as possible. Fromdeeper integrationof AdobeStock intothe CCexperience, to amazingnew featureslike Content-AwareCrop in Adobe Photoshop, this releasewill expeditethe creativeprocess formillions of our customers.”

“The industry is going through unprecedented changes driven by mobile explosion, and content velocity is becoming more critical in tying content and customer experience to business impact and success. However, we know only 16% of marketers and business leaders in Asia Pacific say they have the workflows in place to enable the alignment and collaboration needed to deal with the scale of content production they’re facing[1],”said Paul Robson, president, Adobe Asia Pacific. “This release delivers the magic and improved workflow that   unleashes creativity and helps organisations ultimately provide superb customer experiences across channels.”

Today‘s updates mark another step forward in establishing Creative Cloud as the one-stop shop for creative people — providing the best in desktoptools, mobileapplications, training and avibrant marketplacefeaturing serviceslike AdobeStock, aswell asaccess to theBehance communitythat’s now over 7 millionstrong.

 “We could not have completed our debut television series, “The Wizards of Aus” without Adobe Creative Cloud,” said Chris Hocking, General Manager of LateNite Films. “Unlike the majority of film and television, we didn’t have a traditional offline/online workflow and therefore needed a solution with specific elements: enabled for Mac and PC, compatible for UltraHD footage and the ability to seamlessly switch between offline editing and visual effects without slowing things down. We were constantly jumping between Premiere for editing, and After Effects for visual effects right up until we exported the final Digital Cinema Package using Adobe Media Encoder.”  

“We’ve been utilising Adobe Creative Cloud in order to reflect our brand identity in creative works and deliver a customer-centric design experience,” said Ho Jae Lee, Deputy Head of Design Team, Marketing Division, BC Card. “We believe that these updates, which offer collaboration features critical for keeping visual elements consistent and target many of the pain points that users around the world face every day, will enhance efficiency and creativity altogether.

Built Right into Creative Cloud: Adobe Stock Service Offers Best, Broadest Selection

Research from Pfeiffer Consulting confirms that integrating Adobe Stock with CC desktop applications delivers up to 10 times greater efficiency than other stock services*.  The expanded Adobe Stock service includes over 55 million royalty-free, high-quality photos, videos, illustrations and graphics as well as the following new capabilities:

·         One-Click Workflow. Deeper Adobe Stock integration with CC applications enables a new One-Click Workflow that lets users select an image or video on the Adobe Stock website and place it on their creative canvas with a single click. Also an expanded In-app Purchase feature delivers an industry-first, one-click license capability, directly from Photoshop.

·         Premium Collection. Adobe’s first premium content offering sourced for Adobe Stock includes nearly 100,000 curated images that meet the standards of top advertising agencies, leading brands and digital and print publications.

·         Monetisation Made Easier. Coming soon, Adobe will expand on its vision to build out the world’s largest creative marketplace by offering opportunities for creative professionals to contribute and monetise their work.  They can contribute directly from desktop and mobile applications including Adobe Lightroom CC, Adobe Bridge CC, Photoshop Fix and Photoshop Mix, providing an easy on-ramp to showcasing and selling their work via Adobe Stock. Also coming soon is Adobe’s new Stock Contributor Portal, which will feature intelligent auto-tagging capabilities saving hours of keywording.

New CC Desktop App Capabilities and Performance Enhancements

Highly anticipated CC features, offering critical time savings and new creative opportunities for Creative Cloud subscribers include:

·         Content-Aware Crop in Photoshop, which automatically fills in the gaps when you rotate or expand a canvas beyond the original image size.

·         Face-Aware Liquify in Photoshop, an easy way to create artistic effects with facial features using the Liquify Tool while keeping the face in proportion.

·         Match Font in Photoshop, an innovative font recognition technology that has the ability to recognise and identify licensed fonts and automatically suggest fonts available on your computer system or available to license through Adobe Typekit.

·         Character Animator Preview in After Effects CC, which matches an animated character to a real-life actor’s speech and movements, was first showcased on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in the host’s recurring “Cartoon Donald Trump”(1:30) interviews  and most recently by The Simpsons animation team in the episode that aired May 15, 2016.

·         New Virtual Reality (VR) features in Adobe Premiere Pro CC, including “field of view” mode for previewing content.

·         Fast Export of assets and artboards in Adobe Illustrator CC, allowing users to export assets to multiple formats and resolutions with a single click.

·         Photoshop productivity enhancements, including a four times performance improvement when working with the Font Menu and three times improvement for Content-Aware Fill.

CreativeSync and Assets: Greater Discoverability, Productivity and Integrated Mobile to Desktop Workflows

The company’s signature CreativeSync technology ensures a user’s files, fonts, design assets, and settings instantly appear in their mobile to desktop workflow, wherever they need them.  Recently made available collaboration capabilities include read-only Creative Cloud Libraries that provide controlled permission levels while collaborating with teams. The Creative Cloud library serves as a virtual digital style guide for teams to ensure campaigns are consistent and always on brand. Creatives can also delegate permission levels to help manage libraries and files. Also new is an updated Creative Cloud Libraries panel with Search Filters that allow customers to easily search and select video, photo, vector and illustration assets.

New Capabilities Add Value for Global Brands and Agencies

Creative Cloud for enterprise (CCE) enables customers to create, collaborate and deliver content at high velocity – all behind the security of a corporate firewall. Updates to Creative Cloud for enterprise deliver significant new capabilities, including: simplified workflows for creative teams collaborating and exchanging assets, as well as read-only libraries and folders, archiving support for folders and files and versioning capabilities. With today’s CC release, Adobe Stock for enterprise now includes the Premium collection as well as advanced search, flexible payment plans and the ability to track stock images and videos through one unified enterprise dashboard. 

Pricing and Availability

Updates to CC desktop apps are now available for download by Creative Cloud members as part of their membership at no additional cost. Membership plans are available for individuals, students, teams, educational institutions, government agencies and enterprises. For pricing details, visit: https://creative.adobe.com/plans.