By Brandon Teoh
Adobe has announced Adobe Creative Cloud, giving Malaysian creative types a chance to experience a radical new way of accessing Adobe’s iconic tools and services. It is a membership-based service that provides users with unlimited access to download and install all Adobe Creative Suite desktop applications, game developer tools and integration with Photoshop Touch apps.
“(This is) the biggest move ever, we are totally changing our business model,” said Paul Burnett, Creative Evangelist, Adobe APAC.
Before this launch, Adobe had averaged two years to release one new version of Creative Suite. Burnett said that it was not good enough to keep up with changes around the industry, especially in the genre of creative software; customers simply need updates more regularly to keep up with the demand of consumer behaviour.
Not just a creative suite, Adobe Creative Cloud is a whole ecosystem.
In a nutshell, Creative Cloud caters for the following main components:
- Access to the world’s best tools
- Sync. store & share via cloud
- Publish apps & websites
- Stay a step ahead with updates, support, training
What we need to know is that Adobe’s suite of apps are now cloud-oriented, but they are still desktop-installed applications. The subscription offers a full package of everything seamlessly from desktop to cloud and mobile.
Creative Cloud was announced in the US in April 2012 and launched in May 2012. Since then, many updates for new features have already been patched up for current release to the Malaysian market.
The biggest selling point is Adobe can now deliver innovation faster to customers immediately whenever updates are available – customers do not have to wait between product cycles to get the new features.
For example, using Photoshop to design websites wasn’t really a good idea until the ‘copy css’ feature which is available now! Using this feature, developers get to build websites directly using the original Photoshop files from designers rather than to start all over from scratch.
Basically, at the time of this release, the ability for Photoshop to generate css codes gets better and better.
Designers vs Developers
My greatest impression about Adobe and this new solution is the ability of Adobe Creative Suite to really bridge the gap between designers and developers.
Adobe is really successful at achieving this feat. Finally.
Designers are ever more empowered with the ability to build more powerful design templates that come close to almost as good as a finished product; be it a website or application, mobile app, simulation and animation.
What this new solution enables can be likened to hardcore MS Excel users trying to build a database application using macro alone and totally snubbing their IT departments.
Flash, HTML 5, CSS 3
Burnett gave members of media, updates that Flash is doing fine even though Adobe has officially adopted HTML 5 and CSS 3 – for animation purposes. Developers are using Flash to build 3D games and interactive media these days.
Creating animation with HTML 5 and CSS 3 is getting ever easier with Edge Animate where animation is created by changing CSS properties. The end result comes with computer-generated Javascript which will create animation effect when the web page is loaded on browser all while the underlying CSS codes of the web page remains intact.
This demonstrates just how powerful and useful Edge Animate can be used to create animation and interaction for web pages by relying purely on HTML 5 and CSS 3 only –with this solution, the development approach can be truly non-destructive.
Pricing and Availability
Adobe Creative Cloud for teams is available at approximately US$840 per user for a one year plan.
Existing Creative Suite 3 and later customers who have previously purchased Creative Suite software through a volume licensing program may be eligible to buy at the special price of US$600 per user for one-year plan.
Team memberships are sold via Adobe’s network of worldwide resellers.
