This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.
Today, at Adobe MAX, The Creativity Conference, Adobe announced a significant update to Adobe® Creative Cloud™, the company’s flagship offering for creatives. Available in June, Creative Cloud is a set of “CC” desktop applications that will replace the traditional Adobe Creative Suite 6 packaged software offering. This update to Creative Cloud includes the next generation of Adobe desktop applications — including Adobe Photoshop CC, InDesign® CC, Illustrator® CC,Dreamweaver® CC and Premiere® Pro CC. Creative files can be stored, synced and shared, via Creative Cloud, on Mac OS, Windows, iOS and Android.
Creative Cloud allows users to stay connected with workgroups and the creative community via their desktop, website, or mobile device syncing ideas, files, fonts, settings, notifications, and team members. Group folders allow teams to work collaboratively, and track updates and comments to shared files. Edits are stored with version history and individual members receive 20GB of storage.
Having had a chance to speak with Adobe prior to the MAX event, Jeff Dunn of Edudemic releases an article about some of the Creative Cloud applications’ cool new features. Here are some features from popular applications Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator.
- PHOTOSHOP CC: Camera Shake Reduction- Save blurry camera shots with trajectory analysis to restore sharpness.
- PHOTOSHOP CC: Smart Sharpen – analyzes images to maximize clarity and minimize noise and halos, fine-tunes for high-quality, natural-looking results
- PHOTOSHOP CC: Intelligent upsampling – Enlarge a low-res image for print, or turn a larger image into poster or billboard size, all while preserving detail and sharpness and without introducing noise.
- INDESIGN CC: Faster performance – Under-the-hood improvements throughout InDesign, native 64-bit support speed up work in InDesign.
- INDESIGN CC: Modern UI – InDesign’s updated user interface is consistent with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and now includes brightness control.
- ILLUSTRATOR CC: NEW Sync Fonts – Sync Fonts – part of Creative Cloud – will allow you to search the growing library of Adobe Typekit fonts, sync it to your system, and have it immediately available for use.
- ILLUSTRATOR CC: Touch Type tool – Characters can now be moved, scaled, and rotated like individual objects.
- ILLUSTRATOR CC: Images in brushes – Paint with a brush made from a photo. Art, Pattern, and Scatter brushes can contain raster images, so you can create complex organic designs quickly – with simple brush strokes. As with all Illustrator brushes, your strokes can be reshaped and modified at will.
- ILLUSTRATOR CC: Multiple-file place – Import multiple files into your Illustrator layout at the same time, define the location and scale of your files – images, graphics, and text – and use new thumbnail views to see where each file will go and how big it will be.
This major update to Creative Cloud is available in June. Creative Cloud membership for individuals is US$49.99 per month based on annual membership; existing customers who own CS3 to CS5.5 get their first year of Creative Cloud at the discounted rate of US $29.99 per month. Students and teachers can get Creative Cloud for $29.99 per month. Promotional pricing is available for some customers, including CS6 users.
A team version of Creative Cloud includes everything individual members receive plus 100GB of storage and centralized deployment and administration capabilities. Creative Cloud for teams is priced at US $69.99 per month per seat. Existing customers, who own a volume license of CS3 or later, get their first year of Creative Cloud for teams at the discounted rate of US $39.99 per month per seat if they sign up before the end of August 2013.
Adobe also announced Creative Cloud for enterprise today and special licensing programs for educational institutions and government. For more details, visit: https://creative.adobe.com/plans.
sheri•ann•cheng 