Software News

Adobe overhauled its Creative Cloud service this morning with updates to its suite of software products including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and InDesign CC, along with new mobile apps for iOS and Android.

The San Jose, CA-based company also unveiled Adobe Stock, a new stock photography service that’s integrated into Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of products.

With this new release of the subscription-based Creative Cloud software service, the company is touting Adobe CreativeSync, a new tool that syncs all your assets including photos, files, colors, settings, metadata, and other features across desktop, web and mobile apps. CreativeSync, according to Adobe, lets you access and work on files in any connected Creative Cloud mobile app or CC desktop tool and pick them up later in another, and then finish them in Photoshop CC on your desktop, for instance.

Photographers will be most interested in the updates to Photoshop and Lightroom with this latest overhaul of Creative Cloud. In particular, Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC both get a new Dehaze feature, which was first shown as a sneak preview at Adobe Max in October 2014. Dehaze is designed to eliminate fog and haze from photos, including underwater shots, for clearer images. Haze can also be added to a photo “for artistic effect.”

Photoshop CC also adds Artboards, a way to “design cross-device user experiences in a single Photoshop document and quickly preview them on a device.” Photoshop CC offers a “preview release” of Photoshop Design Space, which is a new user interface designed to integrate better with mobile apps and to be more useful to web site designers.

Adobe Cloud Pricing

Subscription pricing for Adobe Creative Cloud varies. Photographers will mostly be drawn to the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography package, which is available for $9.99 per month and can be used across desktop and mobile devices.

The Creative Cloud Photography suite sees periodic updates, which are included in the subscription cost. For instance, just last April, the company updated the plan and included a new release of Adobe Lightroom CC.

Adobe Stock

Photographers will also be interested in Adobe Stock, a stock photography service that’s integrated directly into Creative Cloud. Now creatives such as art directors and designers will have access to 40 million stock images right within apps such as as Photoshop CC, InDesign CC and Illustrator CC.

For photographers wishing to sell their images to Adobe Stock, Adobe says it will offer “industry-leading rates to photographers and designers contributing content to Adobe Stock.”

Adobe Stock is also available as a standalone stock service at stock.adobe.com, where designers and marketers, who are not yet Creative Cloud members, can download, purchase and sell stock images.

Here’s a rundown of the key features of Adobe Stock according to Adobe’s announcement this morning:

“• Easily manage, work with and purchase stock content. Designers can launch Adobe Stock directly within CC desktop software, add watermarked images to Creative Cloud Libraries and then access and work with images across multiple desktop and mobile tools. When creatives are ready to license the image for finished work, they can do it directly within the CC desktop software application. Designers can also edit a watermarked image in an application like Photoshop CC and, when licensed, these edits are automatically applied to the purchased full-resolution image.

• High-impact creative content for print, web or mobile app projects. Adobe Stock is an extensive marketplace of over 40 million photos, illustrations and graphics, covering virtually every subject. Whether it’s finding a standout image of a Scottish castle for a tourist brochure; a beach volleyball game for a sports web site; or an illustration of a restaurant menu for a mobile app, Adobe Stock has a huge selection of possibilities. Adobe also plans to add new stock content categories in the coming months, leveraging Adobe customers’ unrivalled reach and experience across creative fields.

• Simple and flexible pricing plans. Flexible purchase options enable creatives and marketers to buy single images, as they need them, or purchase a monthly plan. Saving up to 40 percent, Creative Cloud members get the best value when they add an Adobe Stock annual plan option to their Creative Cloud membership. A first for the stock image industry, creatives who sign up for a 10-images-per-month plan can “rollover” unused images for up to a year (most month-to-month stock subscription plans require creatives to use all images each month or lose them). For customers who are not Creative Cloud members, a standalone Adobe Stock service offers single-image pricing, as well as month-to-month and annual membership plans.”

Adobe Stock Pricing

Adobe Stock is available now in 36 countries and 13 languages. Pricing for Creative Cloud individual and team customers is $9.99 for a single image; $29.99 per month for 10 images monthly (with rollover of unused images); and $199 per month for 750 images monthly. Separate pricing is available for Adobe Stock customers who are not Creative Cloud members.

And here’s a rundown of the rest of the changes to Adobe Creative Cloud’s applications, according to today’s announcement from Adobe:

“• Premiere Pro CC furthers its lead in the market with the addition of the Lumetri Color panel for powerful color corrections using intuitive sliders and other simple controls; and Morph Cut, which makes it easier to deliver polished interview content by smoothing out jump cuts in talking-head shots to create a cohesive, polished sequence.

• After Effects CC now has Uninterrupted Preview to allow artists to adjust a composition’s properties and even resize panels without impacting playback. Also, the groundbreaking Adobe Character Animator brings 2D figures to life using a webcam to track facial movements, record dialog and apply movements in real time onto a pre-configured character.

• Illustrator CC is now 10 times faster and 10 times more precise than CS6. Powered by dramatic boosts to its Mercury Performance Engine, users can now pan and zoom smoothly without delays. With the new Chart tool (preview), designers can also create beautiful custom charts and share them with others via CC Libraries.

• InDesign CC gets its own Mercury performance surge with zooming, scrolling, and paging through complex documents now twice as fast. InDesign now also allows users to publish and distribute documents with a single click.

• Dreamweaver CC has new responsive web design capabilities that let designers quickly lay out and build production-ready sites that adapt to any screen size.

• Adobe Muse now includes instant access to premium fonts from Typekit.”