This week, Adobe Creative Cloud members gained access to over a dozen new features for Photoshop. If you’re a Photoshop user, there’s plenty to like. For the rest of us, perhaps not as much. For those unfamiliar, Creative Cloud is a subscription-based service that lets users download and use Adobe’s programs like Photoshop and Illustrator for a monthly fee, as oppose to buying the software outright (which can range in the high hundreds to over $1,000). The publishing software company also announced this week it has more than 1 million free and paid memberships to the Creative Cloud, including approximately 326,000 paid individual members who signed up for the service through November 2012.
The new features include support for HiDPI (Retina) displays for Apple MacBook Pro, a component touted when the new Retina-capable MacBook Pro was announced. This feature was made available to perpetual license customers as a free update as well. Another feature is Smart Object support for Blur Gallery and Liquify. Adobe added the ability to quickly export CSS code for text and objects, and import color swatches to aid website design. New workflow timesavers were added, which include Crop tool refinements. Also included in the update were a number of 3D enhancements, including improved live (OpenGL) previews of shadow effects and additional control over illuminating using 32-bit color picker to create glow effects. Lastly, Conditional Actions was added, a feature that automatically selects the appropriate Action based on user-defined rules. The Conditional Actions feature gives users enhanced image processing speed.
Adobe also added new versions of its Cloud platform including Creative Cloud for teams, which allows creative professionals to collaborate with colleagues on projects. Adobe announced Creative Cloud Connection, which allows for desktop synching and collaborative sharing; Creative Cloud Training, a library of premium instructional video from partners; and it also demonstrated unlimited access to Digital Publishing technology used by major publishers to create interactive content for the iPad.
“It’s been remarkable to see over 1 million users join Creative Cloud in just seven months,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media at Adobe. “Our goal is to make Creative Cloud the ultimate hub for creatives, where they can access the world’s best creative tools, store and collaborate around their work and ultimately showcase their creations. Now with the availability of the new Creative Cloud offering for teams, we’re making it easier for workgroups to create and collaborate.”
