Creative Geeks Rejoice As Design Gets Mobile, Easy

A 7000-strong crowd of designers, creatives and other Adobe devotees openly cheered and clapped during live demonstrations of the latest features released today to Adobe’s flagship Creative Cloud as the software giant ratcheted up the competition in the content creation space.

Among a slew of announcements, the ability to collaborate across devices and people stood tall and received rapturous applause from the audience. Adobe has truly made the creative process mobile in every sense and used the yet-to-released iPad Pro to demonstrate how its killer apps like PhotoShop and InDesign are no longer tied to the desktop and allow finger gestures to design pages on the go.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen later said at a press conference that he was absolutely unapologetic about moving from selling the software via a perpetual licence to a subscription service.

“Having to deal with a perpetual licence would have meant there was no way we could have done what we did with continuous innovation . . .When I step back and look at what we’ve done, I’m just incredibly proud of what we have done. I am absolutely convinced it’s the right model for our customers,” he said.

Brian Lamkin, SVP & GM Digital Media pointed to the fact that 20 per cent of subscribers to Creative Cloud are brand new customers as proof that the strategy was correct.

Adobe will earn more than $US2.5 billion in recurring revenue from Creative Cloud this year.

You can watch the spectacular keynote presentation here. They really do put on a good floor show.

Here’s the release with the full details.

Adobe Drives Creative Innovation Forward at MAX 2015

Creative Cloud Announcements Include New Mobile Apps, Touch in Desktop Tools, Video Assets Coming to Adobe Stock

LOS ANGELES — Oct. 5, 2015 — At Adobe MAX 2015, the world’s leading creativity conference, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) today outlines its vision for Creative Cloud — a “connected creative canvas” where people create and share their work from anywhere. With millions of members around the world, Creative Cloud brings together essential desktop and mobile apps; a growing marketplace for content, assets and talent; and a vibrant community where creatives can showcase their work and find inspiration. Adding to Creative Cloud momentum, the company today shipped two new mobile apps, Photoshop Fix and Capture CC, enabling quick retouching and asset capture on the go and announced new Touch capabilities across Creative Cloud desktop applications including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC and Premiere Pro CC. Adobe is also highlighting its patented CreativeSync technology, which powers connections between desktop and mobile apps and the assets creatives use every day. In addition, video content is coming soon to Adobe Stock, the company’s royalty-free collection of high-quality photos, illustrations and graphics.

Nearly 7000 attendees, from across the creative spectrum, are gathered in Los Angeles to learn, be inspired and network.  This year’s MAX will feature film director Baz Luhrmann; “Humans of New York” founder and photographer Brandon Stanton; illustrator and writer Maira Kalman; and artist, designer and author Elle Luna. To view the keynote via a live stream, visit: http://www.adobe.com/go/maxkeynote.

“Creative Cloud has become the de facto platform for all creatives, providing the tools and services to fulfill every creative need. With this latest release, we’re giving our creative customers the freedom they need to work and be inspired from anywhere,” said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media at Adobe. “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.”

Mobile Apps Enable Design on the Go

Available today, Photoshop Fix offers a retouching and restoration-focused image editing experience on a mobile device, powered by Adobe’s world-renowned image-science technology. The simple, intuitive touch interface makes legendary Photoshop desktop features, like the Healing Brush and Liquify, available for real retouching work on iPad and iPhone. Creatives can now capture anything that inspires them with Adobe Capture CC.  This app combines the capabilities of Adobe Brush, Adobe Shape, Adobe Color and Adobe Hue into a single, powerful, simple-to-use app and the captured design asset can be used as a brush, shape or color theme for professional work. In addition, Adobe shipped updates to other essential connected Creative Cloud mobile apps, including Photoshop Mix, Photoshop Sketch, Illustrator Draw, Comp CC and Premiere Clip.

CreativeSync Powers New Connected Creative Canvas

At the heart of Creative Cloud is CreativeSync, a signature Adobe technology that intelligently syncs creative assets: files, photos, fonts, vector graphics, brushes, colors, settings, metadata and more. Thanks to CreativeSync, all the assets created with Adobe mobile apps can be saved to Creative Cloud Libraries. Libraries can be accessed across desktop and mobile apps and shared with anyone who has a Creative Cloud membership, so it’s easy to collaborate, keep designs consistent and even create style guides to use across projects.

Touch and More Coming to CC Desktop Tools

Adobe today unveils powerful new features across flagship CC desktop apps that are also core to Creative Cloud’s connected system of tools and services. These include innovations for design, web, user experience (UX) design, video and photography customers, across nearly every Creative Cloud application. Highlights include:  For Design, Adobe introduces new and updated Touch workspaces to InDesign CC and Illustrator CC, powering mobile creativity for layout artists and graphic designers.  New Illustrator CC features include the Shaper tool, Live Shapes and enhanced Smart Guides. InDesign CC delivers new online publishing capabilities and Adobe Fuse CC (Preview) 3D character software is added to existing Creative Cloud membership plans. These 3D models can be synced across Creative Cloud Libraries for use in Photoshop CC. Fuse CC recently joined the Adobe product family through the company’s acquisition of 3D innovator, Mixamo.  For Web and UX Design, free-form responsive design comes to Muse CC, to easily create websites that dynamically scale to any size screen, browser or device, without having to code or use restrictive templates. For developers, Dreamweaver

CC also adds responsive design capabilities powered by the popular Bootstrap framework. In Photoshop CC new Artboards capabilities precisely place elements and layers for easier visualization and the first version of Design Space, a streamlined design-centric experience, is made available to all customers. UX designers can also look forward to Project Comet, the only end-to-end UX design solution that includes a new CC desktop app with a companion mobile app. Currently under development Project Comet is demoed publicly today for the first time during the MAX opening keynote.  For Video, Adobe ushers in a new era of UltraHD via comprehensive native format support for editing beautiful 4K-to-8k footage; and advances color, with support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) workflows in Premiere Pro CC and improved color fidelity and adjustments in After Effects CC. Remix, a powerful new audio feature is added to Audition CC. New Touch capabilities are introduced, with Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC and Character Animator optimized for Surface Pro, Windows tablets or Apple track pad devices.

Adobe Stock Adds Video Support, New Purchase Options

Launched in June 2015, Adobe Stock will soon support the download and purchase of video content, adding to its high-impact collection of photos, images and graphics.  Adobe Stock also adds the ability to search for and browse assets directly from Creative Cloud Libraries, including new support for accessing stock within Muse CC, Dreamweaver CC and Flash Professional CC. Adobe Stock is already integrated into flagship products, including Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC.  In addition Adobe Stock is delivering new capabilities for businesses, offering pooled licenses at no extra cost to Creative Cloud for team customers.  Adobe Stock is also being made available for enterprise use, with additional support for license management, reporting tools, and unlimited usage of stock content in large print runs.

Adobe Portfolio Debuts

The company also announced Adobe Portfolio, a new way to create beautiful, simple, creative portfolio websites. Available soon, Portfolio comes free with any Adobe Creative Cloud plan, delivering elegant layouts ideal for any creative field, from photography to fashion. Creatives can customize their Portfolio sites, which support responsive web design to ensure content looks stunning across all screen sizes. Portfolio sites can include a personalized URL, password-protection and high-impact Typekit fonts. Portfolio is built on Behance, the world’s largest and most vibrant creative community, with over 5.6 million members. Users can sync Adobe Portfolio to their Behance Projects pages, ensuring even more opportunities to get their work discovered.

Adobe Updates Creative Cloud Photography

Adobe today unveiled feature updates to its popular Creative Cloud Photography plan that delivers the world’s best imaging software across mobile and desktop, for $9.99 per month.  New and updated touch interfaces and enhanced features in Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC pioneer a fresh way for photographers to interact with their images. As well as introducing Photoshop Fix, Adobe also updated Lightroom mobile with new capture capabilities and Dehaze functionality; added more layer support for Photoshop Mix; and introduced powerful new editing capabilities for Lightroom for web. Adobe Portfolio will also be added to Creative Cloud Photography plan.