Adobe Unleashes Creative Cloud 2015

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This week (June 15) Adobe unleashed the latest version of Creative Cloud: Adobe CC 2015. This has been a much anticipated release for many designers and other creative professionals!

There have been some substantial updates to many of the Adobe Applications, but also some completely new products and services have been introduced as well, such as the new Adobe Stock Service.

Adobe CC 2015 Update Highlights

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Photoshop CC 2015 Art Boards– Art boards were a game-changing feature when they were introduced to Adobe Illustrator. One of the reasons is that it meant multiple assets developed for a branding campaign could be stored in a single document. While there have been workarounds to accomplish this using smart objects in Photoshop in a similar way, it was an inconvenience to not have such a powerful feature. Now art boards are in Photoshop CC 2015, and the impressive power they bring comes with them.

Artboards in Photoshop CC 2015

For designers doing mockups of websites and mobile applications this is a must have. If you’re still using Adobe CS6 software and you work with web designers and mobile app developers, this new feature alone could save you hundreds of hours in productivity a year.

Adobe Muse CC 2015 Shopping Carts, Blogs and More– Adobe Muse has helped many designers who traditionally may have come from a print background, start delivering on web solutions for their clients and employers. Part of what has held these designers back however, has been the lack of ability to create anything but the most basic of websites when it comes to functionality. This limitation has finally been addressed in Adobe Muse CC 2015.

Working with partners like WordPress and Tumblr, the Adobe Muse team has created widgets that will allow designers to integrate blogs, shopping carts, audio and video, and even video backgrounds into their Adobe Muse web designs going forward. While coding may still offer more versatility and options, designers who haven’t built up that skill yet, can still provide the solutions their employers and clients need.

Adobe After Effects CC 2015 Introduces Character Animator– Building and animating 2D characters has been a challenge even for those who understand Adobe Flash or Adobe After Effects. The learning curve for this has always been fairly steep. More and more companies are understanding the value of video and wanting to leverage animated characters instead of live talent. Adobe has made it easier than ever for creatives of any age to use Photoshop and Illustrator to now bring their creations to life with Adobe Character Animator as part of After Effects CC 2015.

By setting up characters in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop using specific rules and importing them as assets to Adobe Character Animator, creatives can now use their web camera to easily animate their characters and even lip sync and allow them to speak for themselves! They can also modify these characters in Photoshop or Illustrator and update them in real time. Once the character is developed the project can be imported into Adobe After Effects to take things to the next level.

Adobe InDesign CC 2015 Publish Online (Preview)– Adobe InDesign may have seen the least overall feature updates for CC 2015, but big things are still on the way for it, particularly the preview we are getting of the new Publish Online feature. You can now publish your Adobe InDesign documents online with robust media features and they will be viewed as HTML without the need for plug-ins.

Native publishing like this can be a real game changer for InDesign users as it will let them publish online and interactive media without learning complex coding techniques or an additional application like Adobe Muse. Designers and publishers will be able to work in the way they always have, while creating more value and delivering on a new online experience for their audiences.

Another exciting feature that InDesign users have long wished for has finally become a reality: paragraph shading. You can now add a solid color or gradient background to individual paragraphs or as part of a paragraph style. It even works across columns, linked text frames, and pages.

For a full run-down of what’s new in InDesign CC 2015, check out InDesignSecrets, and the upcoming issue of InDesign Magazine.

Adobe Illustrator CC 2015 Recovery Mode– Adobe Illustrator is a tool many creatives rely on for complex projects, including typography and logo design. And due to their complexity, sometimes Illustrator will crash with disastrous results for your work. With this in mind, Adobe Illustrator now has a recovery mode similar to InDesign and Photoshop where you can relaunch it and recover your work. This feature is going to save many creatives headaches and hours of productivity.

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Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 Morph Cuts– Many of you may not be doing video content yet, but you really should be, since video is a great marketing tool for creatives. Adobe Premiere Pro CC has a new feature called “Morph Cuts” a transition that will help with the jump cuts in talking head videos, to make them more smooth and seamless.  Combined with the new Lumetri Color Panel and Adobe Hue mobile app, quality video production will be easier than ever, even for new users.

Adobe Lightroom CC 2015 Haze Adjustment– Photographers have wanted this feature for quite a while now. With Lightroom CC and it’s latest update, we can now recover color and contrast by reducing atmospheric haze in photos. Combined with new improvements for Lightroom mobile, this adds more value to what was already a big leap forward for Adobe Lightroom.

Adobe Audition CC 2015 Auto Save To Creative Cloud– If you have ever thought about venturing into Podcasting, Adobe Audition is pretty much all you need if you’re a Creative Cloud user. In Adobe Audition CC 2015 we now have a feature allowing us to Auto Save to our Creative Cloud storage and set the frequency of those Auto-Saves. This may not seem like a big deal, but it will once you start creating content. I’m glad that Auto Save is finding its way into more and more Adobe products, and I think many of us appreciate that.

Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015 Responsive Web Design and Bootstrap– For those of you who are designers with a background in coding like myself, you’ll appreciate many of the new updates to Adobe Dreamweaver. Since I don’t rely on Dreamweaver’s visual editor and focus mostly on split view or code view while making websites, the new live code validation feature is very helpful. But what many of you will find to be the most important update to the new Dreamweaver CC 2015 version, is going to be the focus on responsive and mobile web design.

More of our interactions with companies and products is shifting to mobile experiences. Designers will have to embrace this brave new world and Dreamweaver certainly makes it easier. You can now directly incorporate the Bootstrap responsive design workflow into your web designs and take advantage of Bootstrap shortcodes for easier more streamlined coding.

The New Adobe Stock Service: Buying and Selling Images

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The new Adobe Stock Service is what many of us predicted when Adobe acquired Fotolia. This new service lets you purchase and browse assets directly through your Creative Cloud applications and implement them. Added to that, we now have the ability as creators to sell our own stock images through this service, opening up new revenue opportunities for creatives to turn their talent into products.

The new Adobe Stock Service is membership based and will allow you to download 10 images a month starting at $29.99 if you are a Creative Cloud Member.

Roberto Blake is a graphic designer helping entrepreneurs and small businesses improve their branding and presentations. He also teaches graphic design and Adobe tutorials through his YouTube channel and community. See robertoblake.com for more details.
  • Andre Vandal says:

    I thought the whole purpose of Creative Cloud was to not bother with major updates again and everything would be incremental and always unto date. Looks like they still keep stuff off until the next big thing. Or did I misunderstand the whole thing.

    • Bret Donaldson says:

      Most of the updates typically are incremental. However, for some new features to be added, Adobe has to completely redo the “engine” behind the apps. This requires new stand-alone installs, and was the case with CC 2014. For CC 2015 it was probably he same situation.

      • Agreed! In this case many of the applications got major features. Creative Cloud was about an easier way to update more quickly and a distribution model that is connected to active customers, vs “gap upgrades” if you will.

    • It’s not that it was about not bothering with major updates, but rather a better and faster method of deployment and keeping up to speed.

  • Dave Bate says:

    Roberto,
    Nice overview of the various CC 2015 improvements. Good, informative article.

    • Thanks Dave, your book Speaking Photoshop is Tremendous by the way! I can’t wait to share it more with my audience. Everyone I’ve talked to so far is very interested in it!

  • Kristina Hughes says:

    Very useful stuff for the graphic designer to read it.This post cover all updates of illustrator. I bookmarked it..

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