I’m delighted to say that the new Adobe CC desktop apps, plus a variety of new publishing & collaboration features, are now available. Log into the new creative.adobe.com to download the new versions.

There’s so much that’s new that I won’t even attempt to list features here (rather, I’ll keep posting individual pieces about things I find especially interesting), but you can get a quick overview on this Creative Cloud team blog post. They talk about what’s available now & what’s just around the corner (e.g. Typekit fonts on the desktop, automated Web graphics export from Photoshop, and more). For Photoshop-specific questions, check out this FAQ.

The Creative Cloud management team has updated their blog:

[W]e have heard some concerns around our move to Creative Cloud. Three main themes are coming through:

• File access. Customers want to be sure that, if their membership to Creative Cloud lapses, they will still have access to their files.
• Photographers, particularly photo enthusiasts, are looking for a more tailored offering that focuses on their particular workflows.
• Some customers are not convinced that Creative Cloud is right for them and would rather continue to purchase desktop applications as before.

[…]

For photographers, we are looking at potential offerings that recognize the photography community – because it is so broad – has some unique needs.

With regards to file access, Adobe completely agrees that customers should have access to their files if they choose to stop their Creative Cloud membership. Our job is to delight our customers with innovation, but there are a number of options open to us here and we expect to have news around this issue shortly.

They ask that if you have comments or questions, “please post them in our forums, where we are continuing the conversation.”

Update: CNET has posted an interview with Creative Cloud SVP David Wadhwani.

Longtime Photoshop trainer Dave Cross has posted the results of his experiments opening a PSD file containing new-to-CC features back in Photoshop CS5. (Spoiler alert: Everything works as expected.)
Previous/related:

• Can you open a Photoshop CC file in CS6?
• You should never lose access to your work, period.

Check out CSS extraction from Photoshop & Illustrator, responsive page design with fluid grids, motion paths in Edge Animate, and more:

In addition to HiDPI support, the new release (available via Adobe Labs) supports a number of new lens profiles plus the following cameras:

I joined Adobe to make the tools that my friends & I wanted to use. I was a Web designer & animator who loved what I could do with Photoshop & Flash, but who hated all the barriers that got in the way. My whole mission was—and has remained—to hijack the brains of smarter people and get them building the stuff we (creators) need. My loyalty has always been to that mission.

Like most big changes, the move to Creative Cloud is both exciting & disruptive. So far some people love it while others are very upset. I’m not writing this post thinking I’ll change everyone’s hearts & minds. I just want to tell you how I personally have thought about the change, from the perspective of someone who deeply wants to help creative people thrive.

My overriding thought for months has been, “How can I take advantage of all this to do good things for customers—things we couldn’t do before?” If you’ve come to know me at all through the years, I hope you’ll know how sincerely I say that.

A few key points about the change:

Continue reading →

Over the last few days I’ve seen numerous questions about what data, exactly, is backward-compatible when opening a Photoshop PSD file in an older version of the app. The Photoshop team has worked to keep things as compatible as possible even with 20+ years of evolution. Just for reference, here are some points that might be useful to know.

• Generally speaking, features that don’t depend on new functionality (e.g. bitmap layers) open just fine in older versions. (In theory an 8-bit layered PSD full of images should open in Photoshop 3.0, released in 1994.)
• Photoshop makes a point of storing rasterized copies of layers (e.g. text) to avoid cases where the appearance could get lost (e.g. when a font is missing).
• In cases where a previous version of Photoshop doesn’t support a newer feature, it tries to retain the appearance of the file, but the behavior may vary case by case. Some examples:
  • A Smart Object layer that depends on a newer version of Camera Raw would be retained as a Smart Object, but the older version of Photoshop wouldn’t be able to open & edit the layer’s contents.
  • Text layers retain their appearance, even if the underlying text engine has changed, unless you try to edit them. At that point you may receive a message saying that layout & appearance changes may occur.
  • For a major change that affects multiple layers (for example, 32-bit layers), the older version may need to try opening a flattened version of the file.

I should also note that the PSD format specification is freely downloadable from Adobe.com so that third parties can build their own readers/writers.

What about raw photos?

When you edit the settings of a DNG file using Camera Raw or Lightroom, you can opt to update the embedded JPEG data as well as the settings themselves.  This means, as photographer Peter Krogh likes to say, that a DNG file can serve as a “job jacket”: a container that holds your negative, your development instructions, and your print. (See “The DNG Advantage.”)

Could anyone else use just a moment of levity? 🙂

A number of readers have raised a very valid concern about Creative Cloud subscriptions: How can you retain access to your intellectual property (the work you’ve made with the apps) if you end your subscription? For example, Paul Howson writes,

What makes “Creative Cloud only” an unacceptable option for me is becoming locked into a perpetual “Adobe tax”. If I stop paying the tax, I lose access to the work I have created using the Adobe tools (which is my “property”, not Adobe’s).

Your work is absolutely your property. Adobe fully agrees, and that’s why we’ve worked so hard over the years on things like the DNG standard (meant to ensure that your photos always stay readable), turning PDF into an ISO standard, etc.

There are solutions here, and we’ll work on sharing more details. In the meantime, your suggestions are most welcome. Reader Alan Ralph writes,

Adobe should change their software so that when it’s used outside of a subscription, it will only allow opening, printing and exporting to other formats. That would ensure that you could still access your documents and make use of them. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Would that address your concerns?

Terry White shows off his favorite enhancements in these forthcoming releases. I’m really looking forward to the typographical enhancements in Illustrator, and using an image as a brush is promising.


[Via]

Winston Hendrickson—a legitimately big cheese to my Kraft Single—talks about why Lightroom isn’t going subscription-only while Photoshop is, acknowledges that Creative Cloud doesn’t (yet) offer a lot of interesting photography-specific services, and more in a short interview with DP Review.

Julieanne Kost demonstrates her top 5 favorite features in Photoshop CC, including the new Upright perspective correction, Radial Filter, and Spot Removal  features in Adobe Camera Raw 8, Image Upsampling and Smart Sharpening, Live Shapes for Rounded Rectangles, and Camera Shake Reduction.

It won’t get new features, but Fireworks CS6 will remain available for purchase, and it will get updated to support the next major releases of Mac OS X and Windows. Check out the Fireworks team blog for more info.

History: Macromedia had effectively shut down Fireworks development before being acquired by Adobe. Adobe revived the app and invested heavily in making the app more powerful for rapid prototyping & more.

The Web moves fast, though, and Adobe has to focus. Design means making decisions, and there’s more benefit now in building new, modern tools like Edge Reflow, and in making those work well with Photoshop & Illustrator.

Fireworks is full of great features (which, as noted above, you can continue to download & use). Going forward, my recommendation is to focus on ends, not means. Fireworks lovers, tell the Photoshop & other teams exactly what you need. They’re listening—hard. Photoshop CS6 was the biggest Web/screen design upgrade in 12 years; I think you’ll love what’s arriving in Photoshop CC (smart rounded rectangles, improved type rendering, new CSS generation power, and more); and they’re just getting warmed up.

I’ve highlighted some key points:

• Photoshop and Camera Raw: Photoshop CS6 (non-subscription) will remain available for sale alongside CC, and it will get free updates that add new camera support (though not new features).
• Creative Cloud: You don’t need a constant internet connection (in fact, yearly subscribers can be offline for up to 3 months at a time), and you don’t need to store your data in the cloud. If you’re really going to Antarctica for 6 months or work in a disconnected environment, please call customer service & we’ll get you taken care of. You can keep running older versions alongside the CC versions.
• Lightroom: LR5 will be included in Creative Cloud, but you won’t have to subscribe to Creative Cloud to get it (that is, you’ll be able to keep buying it via perpetual (non-subscription) license).

Short answer: Absolutely.

Longtime Adobe customers have been very clear in their comments here throughout the last year: they’ve invested serious money with the company over the years, and they want that to be honored as we move forward.

Adobe agrees, so check this out:

• If you own CS3 or later:
• You can get Creative Cloud Complete (the whole $2,600 Master Collection & more) for $29.99/month. Even better, if you own CS6, you can get Complete for $19.99/month (60% off the new-user price of $49.99).
• If you don’t need or want everything in Complete, you can get Photoshop CC and other new CC apps for $9.99/month. That’s about 35 cents per day.

[Update: These prices are an intro deal for a 12-month commitment.]

[Note: Photoshop CS6 will remain available (non-subscription); you don’t have to upgrade/subscribe to keep getting camera updates to CS6; and owners of CS3 and above can subscribe & get Photoshop CC for just $9.99/month. More complete FAQs are available, too.]
PM Zorana Gee writes,

We’re thrilled to announce that the next version of Photoshop, the world’s most popular digital imaging software, will be available to Creative Cloud members this June! This release, called Photoshop CC, will deliver dozens of new features, including capabilities in sharpening, upsampling and reducing blur, improvements to designer tools, added capabilities in Adobe Camera Raw, and much more.

My favorite feature is support for “smart” rounded rectangles:

Check out the rest of Zorana’s post for more info, and stay tuned for even more (cloud-synced settings, integration with Behance & Typekit, automated file export, and more).