For legions of creatives, Adobe MAX is worth putting down the stylus to congregate with thousands of others at the holy grail of all things Adobe Creative Cloud. And this past week, the announcements from Adobe MAX 2019 in Los Angeles did not disappoint.
As expected, the company gave more power to iPad Pro users and embraced mobile digital creation overall, while adding flexibility and workflow efficiencies to the desktop experience. Here’s a look at five of the updates that could shape and, possibly enhance, your design workflow in the coming months.
The Launch of Adobe Photoshop on iPad; Illustrator Coming 2020
Adobe has published a fair amount of creative-focused apps for iOS and iPad over the years. But none of them have come close to the full-fledged power of the company’s robust Creative Cloud desktop apps, including Photoshop and Illustrator. All that changes with the ability to bring the power of Adobe desktop apps over to iPad Pro—starting with Photoshop, available now.
With features and user experience considerations reimagined for the touchscreen experience, Photoshop on iPad brings the best of the desktop experience—including full layer support and file resolutions to a device that goes wherever you do. All PSD files are synced automatically to the Cloud for a quick device switch, if needed. Even better, Illustrator and Vector will follow with a slated 2020 release.
New AI-Powered Selection Tools in Photoshop
Speaking of Photoshop, it wouldn’t be an authentic Adobe MAX event without showing off some impressive new AI-powered image selection technologies. Since the earliest days of Photoshop, making object selections within an image has always been a time-consuming process. As a result, each year Adobe makes subtle improvements to various selection tools, with this year’s being one of the most significant jumps in recent memory.
The new Object Selection Tool, located under the Magic Wand tool in the Photoshop toolbar, allows a user to drag a box around objects in a composition and automatically select them from within a scene, including complex objects containing fur. Previously, extracting objects as selections in composition required a delicate manual selection process.
The Introduction of Adobe Photoshop Camera
Advancements in smartphone photography and social media continue to change how people tell everyday stories. Adobe aims to further empower these storytellers even further by combining AI with Photoshop tools to add even more creative options to story compositions.
Leveraging its Sensei AI platform and framework, Photoshop Camera can instantly recognize subjects in a photo and provide creative tool recommendations or automatically apply sophisticated edits. Further, these automated edits can be curated with specific aesthetics curated by artists and designers for users to emulate and learn from different graphical styles.
The Introduction of Adobe Aero
With augmented reality (AR) poised to go mainstream within the next few years, Adobe has begun introducing powerful tools for creatives to start publishing immersive media experiences now.
As the first tool of its kind in the Creative Cloud, Adobe Aero allows designers to build and share experiences in AR without coding skills. These experiences are created using a combination of 2D (including Photoshop files) and 3D file formats (hundreds of starter assets included) to push digital experiences beyond the screen and into the real world. Early users include Oakland-based graffiti artist Allison Torneros (Hueman), who uses the tool to convert murals into immersive interactive experiences.
A New and Improved Creative Cloud Desktop
As the mothership of all things Adobe, Creative Cloud is the all-in-one hub where users can download app updates, install fonts, and even communicate with other creatives via Behance, Adobe’s creative social network.
The new and improved Creative Cloud experience aims to make workflows even more intuitive while simultaneously building out more functionality. Chief among them is the new Creative Cloud Libraries integration, which allows creatives to organize and collaborate on just about every design element, including images, color sets, brushes, templates, logos, and more from a single location. Ultimately, this update should make sourcing and sharing assets across teams or projects a breeze.
