Adobe Creative Cloud updates continue to boost mobile productivity
Adobe has offered mobile apps with a variety of tools for quite some time. With the arrival of the new suite that accompanied Ink and Slide earlier this year though, it became clear the creative software outfit wanted to equip those slates and smartphones to do useful work. At Adobe Max 2014, the company's annual conference, new updates are on tap that continue the mobile focus for Creative Cloud.
Let's chat mobile apps first, shall we? A new trio of "capture" apps make their debut, and on the surface seem to be quite handy. Brush CC constructs brushes from any photograph that can then be used in Photoshop or Illustrator. For example, you could snap a picture of some thick marker lines and easily transform 'em for work on the desktop. These next two are perhaps the most useful of the three. Shape CC takes a high-contrast photo of an object, piece of typography or whatever and creates vector art. Find a leaf that's perfect for a logo? Just snap and image and you'll have it when you're back from that coffee run. Lastly, Color CC (what was known as Kuler) sorts all of those swatches, and it'll create a palette based on an image should the need arise.
For those looking to edit video on the go, Adobe Premiere Clip bolsters that task. The app takes videos shot on an iPhone (or iPad, if you must) and offers editing tools needed to polish the footage before beaming it out to the masses. It also allows you to create clips for Premiere Pro CC on the desktop. Of course, I haven't had a chance to put these to work myself, so I can't speak to how well they boost the typical workflow just yet.
As you might've guessed, all of the apps are iOS only -- working on either iPhone or iPad for now. Existing apps like Photoshop Sketch, Photoshop Mix, Lightroom Mobile, Illustrator Draw (Adobe Ideas) and Illustrator Line all get updates to boost productivity as well. Adobe released a Creative SDK earlier this year, so third-party apps can tap into Creative Cloud. We should be seeing the fruits of that soon enough. Unfortunately, there's no word on when the Android faithful can expect to see Adobe's apps land for their devices.
When you jump from app to app now (desktop and mobile), Creative Profiles will allow you to access the bits you create during the course of a project. All of the images, color palettes, brushes, fonts, and more will be easily accessible in each piece of software, and across devices, thanks to Creative Cloud Libraries. This should translate to some significant time savings usually wasted hunting for assets. It also means that glimpses of inspiration captured on the commute to the office will be ready when your arrive. For designers that pass Photoshop layouts off to developers, Creative Cloud Extract will tidy up that workflow, allowing you to send along the requisite project files in a more efficient manner.
Making good on the promise form back when Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro 3, Adobe is delivering touch support across "key design applications" for Windows. We expect to hear more when Max kicks off today, but Photoshop and Illustrator are definitely included. There are plenty more app-specific updates on the desktop side, and you can find all of the minutiae on those right here. Like previous updates to Creative Cloud, this entire lot is free for subscribers, and it's all set to arrive before the end of the day. If you haven't opted in, you can still nab the iOS apps that are free to all users.
Want to catch the official announcements? You can access the livestream from Los Angeles here at 12:30 PM ET/9:30 AM PT.
