The world has been abuzz today with news of the Creative Suite announcement, and that of Creative Cloud. For the most part it’s Photoshop that interests photographers, but there is far more in the suite that should appeal to them. The new features of Photoshop have been visible in the public Beta, so let’s not go over them here. As for this blog and it’s Lightroom focus, CS Evangelist Paul Trani mentions that Lightroom will be included in the Creative Cloud in the future.
With the release of CS6, there’s a huge focus on the natural web, and increasing the power of CSS. With this in mind Adobe have launched http://html.adobe.com to highlight what they’re doing to push html forward. This is good for photographers, as it will allow more enriched and immersive web sites. Good for branding, good for visiblity and good for business.
Other areas that should be of interest to photographers include video, at a minimum for self promotion, right up to an additional revenue stream. Premiere Pro right now is the king of the hill for me in video editing. Having come from Final Cut, I have to say I really like Premiere, and with CS6, it’s gone from strength to strength. And of course book and magazine creation via InDesign. With services like MagCloud, it’s possible to create and distribute your own promo magazines for a little as 20¢ a page, not to mention the new publish services in CS6 that allow you to publish straight to a tablet, like the iPad.
Purchasing a Suite is normally an expensive way to get involved, but for businesses, the Creative Cloud, with its monthly fee is a good way forward. With an introductory price of $49.99 per month for current Adobe users($600 for a year effectively), you get access to over $2500 worth of software. For startup photography businesses, that removes a huge barrier to entry for the most current software related to their business. Even 1 job a month that benefits from access to the suite will pay for it.
For individuals it may seem like you’ve nothing to show for your dough. For instance, you can still run older versions of software just fine on most PC’s (Macs are a little more limited with Intel only versions running on Lion). You can of course still buy the software and upgrade what you use.
So what happens if you decide to go with Creative Cloud? The software is still run on your computer-it’s not in the cloud as such. You signup and download the software you need. It’s kinda like the App Store, in that the software will be constantly updated, so you’re not waiting 18 months-2 years for features to become available. Files can be saved to the cloud, and accessed from your Adobe Touch Apps (sold separately) as well as your computer.
For photographers in business I think Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud will be a boon. Personally I’ve been working around getting files available on all my devices: Mac Pro at home, iMac in the studio, MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone on the go, so this seems to be the solution to help finish projects I’m working on.
