Welcome to my technology blog!
The June 2013 issue of Adobe Inspire Magazine is here! This month’s issue contains articles on Adobe Muse CC, Photoshop CC, the CSS Designer in Dreamweaver CC and more. There’s even an article and video from yours truly on Photoshop CC’s new Sharpening and Upsampling capabilities.
Adobe Inspire is a FREE digital publication created with the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) and you can get it here:
Don’t have an iPad?
You can also check out the web version here.
Today’s the day! The long awaited Creative Cloud apps are now available for you to download, install and use. There are new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Muse, Dreamweaver, Bridge, Premiere Pro, After Effects, InCopy, Flash Pro, Audition, Prelude, Speedgrade, Edge Animate and Edge Inspect, as well as Adobe Scout CC, Edge Code CC Preview and Edge Reflow CC Preview. As a Creative Cloud Member you can download any or all of these applications.
To get started head over to creative.adobe.com, login with your Adobe ID and choose which app you want to download first. You’ll then be prompted to download the new Creative Cloud Desktop (this replaces the old Adobe Application Manager – R.I.P.). Once signed in you can choose which apps you want as well as log in to your Behance account to get activity updates as well.
Beside the CC Apps themselves, there’s a brand new Learning Center where you can view several new getting started videos. There will be content added here on a regular basis. Of course Lightroom 5 is available to Creative Cloud members as well as Adobe InCopy CC. InCopy was never part of the suites and was always a separate purchase just like Lightroom. It’s great to have both of these applications be a part of the Creative Cloud.
If you want to see my videos on Creative Cloud, head over to this special playlist I’ve created on YouTube. You can get a taste of it below as well:
While all the CC Apps shipped as planned, two of the services unfortunately aren’t ready yet. The Desktop Sync feature of the New Creative Cloud Desktop app is currently disabled until the back-end performance is where we (and you) want it to be. Also since the Typekit Desktop Fonts rely on the desktop sync features to work, it’s also turned off at this time. As soon as these features are ready they will be enabled in your Creative Cloud Desktop app.
You can still use your 20GB of storage space via your web browser and the mobile apps that sync with it like Photoshop Touch and Adobe Ideas.
There are several different levels of membership for Adobe Creative Cloud. Everything from individual full memberships to single app memberships to student/teacher memberships and of course team, enterprise and government. There are also special deals for existing Creative Suite users from as far back as CS3.
See the membership options here.
See the special deals for CS3-CS6 users here.
Buy a full year of Creative Cloud at once here.
Buy a full year of Creative Cloud for student/teacher here.
Today Adobe has shipped Lightroom 5! With over 400 bugs fixed since the Public Beta and a NEW Publish to Behance feature, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 is now shipping. The retail price of $149 remains in effect as well as an upgrade/student price of $79. Of course Lightroom 5 is also available to Creative Cloud members to download and install at no additional cost.
The Develop module has come a long way in Lightroom 5 and with the addition of the Radial Filter and non-circular Spot Removal Tool I now feel comfortable enough to do a complete portrait retouch in Lightroom. Since all of the adjustments are in the Develop Module the entire process is completely non-destructive.
I’m also very honored to have made it into the About Lightroom credits screen. It’s an honor to have my name on such a fantastic product!
In case you missed it, see Lightroom 5 in action and my Top 5 Favorite Features:
See the details here.
Lightroom 5 has a great new non-circular spot removing/healing brush. However, there’s a feature that many will overlook for using the tool for what it was originally intended for. It’s always been great at removing dust spots from dirt on your lens or sensor dust as long as you could see the spots in your images. Now with the new Visualize Spots feature you can find them much easier.
See more of my Adobe Creative Suite Videos on my Adobe Creative Cloud TV and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App! My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:
You can get the Lightroom 5 Public Beta here.
I was backstage during the opening of the Adobe MAX Day 1 Keynote so I really never got a chance to see the stunning opening video. Here it is in case you missed it or wanted to see it again:
When Lightroom 5 Public Beta was introduced I recorded a video showing my Top 5 Favorite Features (see below). One of the features that I knew would be a game changer for me was the new Smart Preview feature. When you build “Smart Previews” for your images they are available even if the original RAW files, TIFFS, JPGs, PSDs, etc. aren’t with you. You can perform edits on them in the Develop Module and also output them for web/email as well as use them in slideshows. I was curious as to how much space these Smart Previews would really take up. Last night I did a test. I opened my Portrait/Models Catalog and built Smart Previews for every photo I’ve ever edited. What constitutes an edit? An edit in this catalog means that I retouched (edited) the photo in Photoshop and the edited version is a PSD file in my catalog. To identify these “edits” I built Smart Collections that organize my edits by year.
I simply selected every image that I’ve ever edited as far back as 2006 (a total of 3,669 photos) and built Smart Previews for all of these images. Now keep in mind that all of the original PSDs but my most recent two shoots reside on my file server. They are NOT on my local hard drive in my MacBook Pro. However, I keep my catalogs with me in my Dropbox folder so that they are sync’d to my other Macs as well as backed up to the cloud. There’s no way that I’d want to house these 3,669 images on my internal drive. Nor would I actually have the available space even if I wanted to. However, there have been times that I’ve wanted to use these images in slideshows, email to clients or update my websites/social media presence with them. If Smart Previews would enable me to always have access to these images even if the originals are back in the studio on the server then I’d be elated. So the real test was how much room would the Smart Previews take up?
I was shocked and thrilled to see how little space they actually took up! Also keep in mind that the above 1.73GB Smart Preview file also contains Smart Preview for other images in that Catalog besides the 3,669 I did last night. Now I will always be able to show and SHARE my work even if the originals are “offline”.
You can get the Lightroom 5 Public Beta here.
Today Adobe took the wraps off all NEW versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Muse and more. The Creative Suite (CS) Applications have been rebranded Creative Cloud (CC). I’m here to give you your first look at these applications and to share my Top 5 Favorite Features in each one. I’ve created a Creative Cloud Learning Center playlist on my YouTube channel and added my four new videos to it. I’ll continue to add more videos on Creative Cloud in the coming weeks and months. The NEW CC versions will be available to Creative Cloud Members on June 17th.
Note: Currently there are no plans to add new features to Creative Suite. Creative Suite 6 will continue to be available indefinitely for those that aren’t ready or don’t want to go to Creative Cloud. Also Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Acrobat Professional will continue to be sold as perpetual licenses. This probably brings up a lot of questions and we’ve tried to anticipate as many as possible. Go here to get answers.
Continue reading “What’s New In Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC and Muse CC?”
I have the honor of being on stage today at the Adobe MAX Keynote in Los Angeles. I’ll be showing some never seen before new technologies and you can watch the LIVE STREAM. That’s right, even if you didn’t make it to Adobe MAX this year you can still watch the keynote. It will air from 9:30-11:30am PT (GMT -7) and you can sign up to watch it here. I think this will be the largest audience I’ve ever presented in front of live and I look forward to seeing you at MAX or at least knowing you’re watching from where ever you are in the world!
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you next week at Adobe MAX – The Creativity Conference in Los Angeles. The show kicks off Monday for me with the Day 1 Keynote and sessions.
Want to save $300 on Adobe MAX? Use this promo code: MXSM13
Last week I announced that I’d be giving away a FREE Ticket to Adobe MAX 2013 and I have a winner. The contest ran across both Twitter and Facebook. The Winner is Facebook Fan, John Paul Rock! John will join me at the Adobe MAX Conference as well as get VIP treatment at MAX Bash. Congratulations John.
I look forward to seeing all of you at the Creativity Conference – Adobe MAX 2013 in Los Angeles from May 4-8, 2013.