Adobe’s conference, Adobe Max 2013, began yesterday and there were a lot of announcements headed our way. The biggest announcement is that the Creative Suite line is fading away with CS6 being the last. In its place, Adobe is betting the company on the subscription model like Office 365 in the form of Adobe Creative Cloud. In addition, Adobe announced major updates to the Creative Cloud, software updates, and even hardware.
The Keynote
The keynote was titled “A Creative Evolution” but the main message is ‘CS’ is out and ‘CC’ is in. You can watch a replay of yesterday’s keynote and soon today’s keynote ‘Community Inspires Creativity’ will be added.
Alternatively, the press release ‘Adobe Accelerates Shift to the Cloud‘ provides a good summary of the announcements though most of it can be broken down into the following categories.
Pricing
From the same previously mentioned press release:
By signing up for Creative Cloud today, creatives will be set up to immediately download and use these latest cloud-enabled innovations from Adobe, when they are available next month. 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.
As an introductory deal for a 12 month agreement, folks that own CS3 or newer versions can get a discounted price for the Creative Cloud Complete package or individual applications. There is also a free 30 day trial
Hardware
Adobe’s foray into hardware was exciting because it was rather unexpected. The tools a stylus and digital ruler embrace the mobile/tablet world
- Project Mighty – A stylus that ties to Creative Cloud
- Project Napolean – Complementary to Mighty, Napolean is a digital ruler designed to bring back some of the feeling of drawing with analog tools like the t-square and triangle
Software
With the number of software updates announced, they rightfully received their own press release, ‘Adobe unveils major update to Creative Cloud‘.
CS 6 will still be sold and supported but all future development will be directed into the Creative Cloud titles. Using the cloud will allow more frequent, less major updates to come out as they are ready. Hundreds of new features and enhancements to Adobe’s flagship products like Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, and Premiere Pro CC were included in the Creative Cloud update.
Project Context provides a digital layout board for publishers like those who assemble magazines. With Adobe’s Project Context, teams can build the publication digitally instead of printing out the pages and sticking them to a board.
The Creative Cloud Team Blog provided the highlights of today’s announcements:
- Camera Shake Reduction in Photoshop CC “deblurs” an image by restoring sharpness to images blurred by camera shake
- ACR8 is now available as a filter in Photoshop CC; you can apply Adobe Camera Raw processing to any of the layers in your document
- Touch Type tool in Illustrator CC allows you to design with type in a powerful new way by manipulating characters like individual objects. You can also use multitouch devices as well as a mouse or stylus
- CSS Designer in Dreamweaver CC provides the most up-to-date CSS and properties available via an intuitive visual editing tool
- Editing Finesse in Premiere Pro CC focuses on sleek design and customization capabilities, combined with new editing features and keyboard-driven editing improvements
- Live 3D Pipeline with Cinema4D in After Effects CC lets you add 3D objects to scenes and eliminate intermediate rendering between applications
- Parallax Scrolling in Muse CC allows you to create stunning effects with just a few mouse clicks—images and elements move in different directions at different speeds when scrolling
- Motion Paths in Edge Animate allows you to animate elements along totally customizable paths
- A completely modernized architecture in InDesign and Flash Pro has been rebuilt from the ground up to be faster and more reliable, with a streamlined UI
- InDesign has a great new QR code creator
- Flash Pro has real-time drawing and live preview
You might also find additional information from the other articles Adobe published yesterday.
Photoshop
Breaking from Tradition: Photoshop CC
Powerful New Adobe Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud)
Answering your questions about Photoshop CC
New FAQs about Photoshop, Lightroom, & Creative Cloud
After Effects
Introducing the new After Effects CC
Dreamweaver
It’s Not Your Father’s Dreamweaver – It’s The New Modernized Dreamweaver
Illustrator
Flash Pro
Flash Pro CC aka “Hellcat” is coming in June!
Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro CC for Broadcasters
Edge Animate
Edge Animate CC – Coming in June
Thoughts?
Are you excited about the new features or bummed about the subscription costs? $50 a month for Complete access seems a bit expensive for the hobbyist or casual creative. If you use three or more apps, you would be better off with the Complete than the $19.99 per month cost for a single app. Teams/Business and Education also seem very high for organizations. With a ‘per-month, per-user’ cost, it requires serious evaluation if including another person is worth the additional cost. The majority of the features as you upgrade seem to be tied into Cloud storage which seems like a lumped in feature you cannot necessarily shave off to save some money.