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Tag: Illustrator

  • Adobe releases Creative Cloud apps into wild, offers discounts

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    Adobe’s Creative Cloud is now out, in the wild and pretty spiffy.

    Per 9to5Mac, Adobe recently introduced big updates and new features to just about every app in the CC suite, including updates to its design apps like Illustrator, a new Kuler iPhone app, revamped web tools such as Dreamweaver and Edge Animate, and updates to just about every other app it makes. On Tuesday, Adobe finally made the massive Creative Cloud update available to all users and is also offering a number of promotional discounts as well.

    “We’ve added a ton of new innovation to all our CC desktop apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. These apps include new features that increase productivity, streamline the effort to build mobile content and showcase some stunning new imaging and video science. And in addition to the traditional areas of innovation these apps are now connected to the powerful publishing and community features integral to the Creative Cloud experience,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media, Adobe. “And with even more great updates coming to Creative Cloud throughout the year, we can’t wait to see the incredible work our customers are going to deliver.”

    Normally US$50/month (US$30 for existing CS customer), you can currently get up to 60% off to upgrade from a Creative Suite product to a Creative Cloud membership with special introductory pricing of US$29.99/month. There’s an additional US$20/month off for signing up for Creative Cloud for Teams.

    Adobe is apparently considering the release of a photographer’s bundle, as the company sent out a survey asking users their thoughts on a US$10/per month Photoshop offering or US$30/per month for access to the entire suite. The catch is it would only last for three years with users able to “keep a permanent CS6 copy of either at the end.”

    If you’ve tried the new Creative Cloud suite or have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.

  • Adobe launches rebranded Creative Cloud service, highlights updates

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    It may not be perfect for your needs, but Adobe’s pretty proud of it.

    Per AppleInsider, Adobe’s popular Creative Suite got more than just a rebranding on Monday, as the company also revealed a number of new and advanced features for the rechristened Creative Cloud package.

    Customers buying Adobe’s new subscription-based Creative Cloud service will see improved capabilities across Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash Pro, After Effects, Muse, Dreamweaver, and other titles. In perhaps Adobe’s best-known offering, Photoshop, the most notable new feature is a tool that reduces image blur brought on by camera shake. Photoshop also includes a redesigned Smart Sharpen utility, improved upsampling, and the ability to apply RAW edits as a filter in any layer.

    Illustrator CC adds the ability to use the Touch Type tool to manipulate characters like individual objects. Users also can take images such as bitmaps and turn them into brushes, and the program can now generate CSS code by itself, allowing users to create web elements more easily. The vector drawing program also added increased support for multitouch devices and styluses.

    InDesign CC now includes 64-bit support, a new user interface, Retina Display support, and the inclusion of Adobe’s Creative Cloud sharing features. It also gets performance enhancements and a new QR Code Creator.

    Adobe’s color-picking Kuler program saw a new iPhone application introduced today, giving users the ability to export to Illustrator CC. It also includes new preset color modes, allowing users to create color themes and share them throughout Creative Cloud software.

    Adobe’s video editor improved with redesigned user interfaces and streamlined editing in the case of Premiere Pro CC and Cinema 4D integration in the case of After Effects CC. Flash Pro CC adds a 64-bit architecture and redesigned UI, while another web development offering, Dreamweaver CC, adds a new CSS Designer.

    With the move to the exclusively subscription-based Creative Cloud, Adobe will stop releasing updates for Creative Suite products. Creative Suite 6 will still be sold and supported, but new features will only come to Creative Cloud products from here forward. Creative Cloud subscription fees run from US$19.99 per month to US$69.99 per month depending on account type and features.

    If you’ve tried Creative Cloud and have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.

  • Adobe releases Retina Display updates for Illustrator CS6 13.0.3, Photoshop CS6 13.0.2

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    You’ve been hankering for it since the Retina Display came on the market and now it’s arriving.

    Per AppleInsider, in conjunction with its Create NOW event, Adobe on Monday released an update to all users of Creative Suite 6 that brings support to HiDPI screens like the Retina displays found in Apple’s top-of-the-line MacBook Pros.

    It was first speculated that Adobe woud be releasing HiDPI versions of its professional image editing software in November when the company posted a video that showed a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display running Photoshop CS6 in a native high-resolution mode.

    With the new capabilities, Adobe made good on a promise in August to bring Retina support for both Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6 by the end of the year. Adobe introduced a release candidate of Lightroom 4.3 earlier in November with support for both the 13-inch and 15-inch Retina display MacBook Pro models.

    The updates can be downloaded and installed via Adobe Creative Suite 6’s updater application (pull down the “Help” menu, click “Updates…”) and this will open.

    Along with Photoshop and Illustrator, Adobe plans to offer Retina display support for its entire suite of software, including Dreamweaver, Prelude and Premiere Pro, among others. No launch timeline has been announced, but updates are expected soon.

    Adobe’s Create NOW Live event is scheduled to start on Tuesday with a keynote from Vice President of Products Jeffrey Veen, which will be followed by discussions ranging from new Creative Cloud features to design talks from industry professionals.

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available and if you’ve tried the new versions, please let us know what you make of them in the comments.

  • Adobe announces immediate availability of Creative Suite 6, will launch Creative Cloud on May 11th

    You know, it’s been a while since you spent a lot of money on an Adobe product.

    It’s time to remedy that.

    Per AppleInsider, Adobe announced on Monday that its Creative Suite 6 software collection is available now and its Creative Cloud subscription service will arrive on May 11.

    The company issued a press release early Monday morning announcing “immediate availability” of CS6, which includes Photoshop, InDesign, lllustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Flash Professional. The San Jose, Calif., software maker officially unveiled CS6 last month, touting new tools for 3D design. “Today we’re shipping CS6 and look forward to the beginning of an exciting new era as we introduce Creative Cloud later this week,” said David Wadhwani, Adobe’s senior vice president of Digital Media Business.

    Creative Suite 6 contains a total of 14 applications across four suite versions: Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium (US$1,899), Adobe Creative Suite 6 Standard Design (US$1,299), Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium (US$1,899), and Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection (US$2,599).

    The new Creative Cloud, which is expected to go live on Friday, costs US$49.99 per month with an annual membership or US$74.99 on a month-to-month. Owners of older Creative Suite versions can receive a discount on their first year of subscription. The service includes “access to download and install all CS6 applications, new HTML5 desktop products – Adobe Muse 1.0 and Adobe Edge preview – and deep integration with Adobe Touch Apps,” according to the release.

    New CS6 features highlighted by the company include improved performance with the Adobe Mercury Graphics functionality, enhanced user interfaces and “new science” integrated into its imaging and video apps.

    Adobe released a public beta of Photoshop CS6 in March, attracting more than 500,000 downloads in less than a week.

    If you’ve tried the new version, please let us know what you make of it in the comments.

  • Adobe formally announces Creative Suite 5, will ship in 30 days

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    Software giant Adobe formally announced the release of its Creative Suite 5 product on Monday. The software, per AppleInsider, features integration with online content and digital marketing measurement. For the first time, Creative Suite 5 products include access to Omniture technologies, to capture, store and analyze information generated by Web sites and other sources. The suite also includes a brand new component, Flash Catalyst, joins the Creative Suite, which allows users to design interactive content without writing code and improve the collaborative process between designer and developer.

    Creative Suite 5, which is due to to ship within the next 30 days, also enables the creation of content and applications for Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.

    This release line-up includes the following Creative Suite 5 editions:
    Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection (US$2599)
    Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium (US$1899)
    Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Standard (US$1299)
    Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium (US$1799)
    Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium (US$1699)

    Included with the various suite editions are 15 point products, associated technologies and integration with new Adobe CS Live services: (CS Live online services are complimentary for a limited time.):

    Photoshop CS5
    Illustrator CS5
    InDesign CS5
    Acrobat 9 Pro
    Flash Catalyst CS5
    Flash Professional CS5
    Flash Builder 4
    Dreamweaver CS5
    Fireworks CS5
    Contribute CS5
    Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
    After Effects CS5
    Encore CS5
    Soundbooth CS5
    Adobe OnLocation CS5
    Adobe Bridge CS5
    Adobe Device Central CS5
    Adobe Dynamic Link
    Comparison Tool

    Among the suites major new features are:
    Truer Edge technology in Photoshop CS5 Extended offers improved edge detecting technology and masking results in less time. Photoshop CS5 Extended also lets users remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels with Content-Aware Fill.

    InDesign CS5 powers the transition to digital publishing with new interactive documents and enhanced eReader device support.

    Native 64-bit support in Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects enables customers to work more fluidly on high resolution projects.

    New Text Layout Framework in Flash Professional CS5 provides professional-level typography capabilities with functions like kerning, ligatures, tracking, leading, threaded text block and multiple columns.

    New stroke options in Illustrator CS5 allow users to create strokes of variable widths and precisely adjust the width at any point along the stroke.

    The NVIDIA GPU accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine allows Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 users to open projects faster, refine effects-rich HD sequences in real time and play back complex projects without rendering.

    The new Roto Brush tool in After Effects helps users save time by isolating moving foreground elements in a fraction of the normal time.

    Dreamweaver CS5 now supports popular content management systems Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, allowing designers to get accurate views of dynamic Web content from within Dreamweaver.

    Adobe CS Live:
    Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium also integrates with new Adobe CS Live, a set of five online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow and enable designers to focus on creating their best work. CS Live online services are complimentary for a limited time and currently include:

    Adobe BrowserLab, a tool for testing Web site content across different browsers and operating systems.

    Adobe CS Review, which enables online design reviews directly from within Creative Suite 5 applications.

    Access to Acrobat.com services, such as Adobe ConnectNow Web conferencing, to enhance discussion and information exchange with colleagues and clients around the globe.

    Adobe Story, a collaborative script writing tool that improves production and post-production workflows in CS5 Production Premium.

    SiteCatalyst NetAverages from Omniture, which provides Web usage data that helps reduce the guesswork early in the creative process when designing for Web and mobile.

    Pricing and Availability:
    Adobe Creative Suite 5 and its associated point products are scheduled to ship within 30 days, with availability through Adobe Authorized Resellers, the Adobe Store and Adobe Direct Sales. At 11:00 am ET (8:00 am PT) today, Adobe will offer a live streaming preview of CS5 through its website.