Today at Adobe MAX, Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) unveiled significant innovation across its Creative Cloud applications and services. In addition to ground-breaking new features like Neural Filters in Photoshop, the company released major updates to its flagship applications including Lightroom, Premiere Pro and Illustrator. Adobe also underscored its commitment to accelerating the development of mobile and multi-surface apps, with the official launch of Adobe Illustrator on the iPad and Adobe Fresco on the iPhone. Additionally, the company previewed a prototype of a digital content attribution tool that will debut within Photoshop and Behance as part of its Content Authenticity Initiative.
Adobe MAX 2020: Creativity for All
Rooted in Adobe’s mission to enable creativity for all, MAX 2020 is offered as a free around-the-world event. With 56 hours of live content planned, Adobe MAX will inspire, educate and entertain creators through product deep dives, luminary masterclasses and community events. From seasoned professionals to students, social media mavens and hobbyists, this year’s event offers endless opportunities for creators to take their skills to the next level.
“In a year defined by so many challenges, we’re proud to bring our community together to underscore the resilience of creativity and share our vision for empowering creativity for all,” said Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president, Creative Cloud, Adobe. “Visualizing ideas, sharing stories and expressing whatever’s in the mind’s eye are more important now than ever. We’re excited to introduce creative apps and services built to fuel continued growth for creative professionals, while also outfitting novices who want simple tools that bring their ideas to life.”
Addressing Creators’ Needs in 2020
According to Adobe’s State of Creativity research, 82% of creators say that the events of 2020 have forever changed how they create, and 83% feel it’s more important than ever to expand their abilities. With this reality as the backdrop, today’s Creative Cloud releases empower users to level up their skills, collaborate seamlessly with others, accelerate their productivity and create for new mediums in entirely new ways.
Creative Systems Built to Accelerate Collaboration
It has never been more critical for teams to be in sync and work together efficiently than it is now. Creative Cloud applications have always been essential in driving creative output, but their power is even more evident when they work together. Over the years, Adobe has strategically tied key elements of its portfolio together into a powerful creative system that enables seamless sharing, consistency and collaboration between teams, which is especially critical in a remote working environment.
Creative Cloud Libraries, Expanded: Libraries, which previously enabled select cross-app asset sharing and collaboration, now allows users to create and distribute design systems through Adobe XD, access assets in Adobe Spark and connect to third-party apps like Google Workspace and other systems through open Library APIs for developers.
Versions in Cloud Documents: View, revert, and name past document iterations with automatic creation of Cloud Document file versions.
Invite to Edit: Access work anywhere and collaborate easily with Invite to Edit functionality, which will be coming early next year to tools like Fresco, Photoshop and Photoshop on the iPad.
Supercharge Creativity: Powerful New Tools to Create the Impossible
The company introduced hundreds of cutting-edge features built to help users take their creativity to greater heights. Integrated into many of Adobe’s flagship products, boundary-pushing features showcased at MAX include:
Photoshop: Introduced in the Photoshop experience, Sensei-powered Sky Replacement, two new Refine Edge selections and the breakthrough Neural Filters open up a world of new possibilities for users to expand and elevate their creativity in a matter of seconds. These features offer new ways to reduce complex workflows while also giving access to a growing library of artistic filters to ignite ideas or refine images.
Illustrator and Illustrator on the iPad: Featuring a plethora of new ways to transform design ideas into beautiful, precise graphics, the 1.0 release of Illustrator on the iPad brings users the core toolkit and more, with 18,000 fonts and new features like radial, grid and mirror repeat. And on the desktop, the new Recolor Artwork feature lets users change entire color themes with just one click. When using Illustrator’s desktop and iPad apps, creators will find a smooth cross-device experience that allows them to create a wide range of graphics, from a logo to a t-shirt illustration.
Fresco on the iPhone: The new Fresco on the iPhone offers users the same functionality they’ve grown to love on the iPad and on Windows touch devices. Powered by Cloud Documents, all Fresco projects are instantly available on all supported devices across desktop, mobile and tablet for a seamless multi-device experience.
Lightroom: Advanced Color Grading across the Lightroom ecosystem, the ability to save versions as you edit images and enhanced performance in Lightroom Classic.
Premiere Pro: Major performance improvements, alongside a preview of Sensei-powered Speech to Text, which automates speech transcription from video content and also generates captions and subtitles.
After Effects: Sensei-powered Roto Brush 2 that selects and tracks an object, frame by frame, isolating the subject automatically with even the most challenging footage. Additionally, a new 3D Design Space in After Effects offers new 3D Gizmos, improved camera tools and more, to navigate and design in 3D better and faster.
XD: The new 3D Transforms feature allows UI/UX designers to bring depth and perspective to their user experience designs and to explore UI/UX design for AR experiences.
Adobe Aero: A public beta for Aero on the desktop enables anyone to create immersive and interactive AR experiences.
Unlimited Opportunities to Elevate and Expand Skills
Adobe is delivering a number of products, services and resources—many completely free—so users can learn new skills and stay competitive. From expert-led livestreaming sessions, to user-friendly tutorials, inspiring challenges and fun creativity hacks, Creative Cloud is a 24/7 creativity hub, with a built-in community to help anyone elevate their skills. New features and learning opportunities include:
New and enhanced in-app learning experiences within Photoshop, Illustrator on the iPad and Animate.
Expansion of in-app livestreaming—which debuted in Fresco earlier this year—to Photoshop on the iPad and Illustrator on the iPad, making it possible for even more people to “go live” to their fans and learn from other creators.
Enhancements to Lightroom’s Learn and Discover, including the ability to follow others, discover and share presets and create a personalized feed for photographers to discover curated community content.
Wide-ranging tutorials, creative challenges and non-stop Adobe Live learning experiences available for free via Creative Cloud Discover.
Leadership on Content Authenticity
Adobe shared an update on the Content Authenticity Initiative, a program focused on combating deceptive content manipulation online.
In August, the company published a technical whitepaper on the topic in collaboration with industry, academic and NGO co-authors, and today it takes a step forward by showing how the tool will work within Photoshop and Behance. Adobe previewed a prototype of the attribution functionality, which will be available to a group of beta users in Photoshop in the coming weeks, and rolled out to other Creative Cloud apps in 2021.
Through the Content Authenticity Initiative, Adobe is spearheading the development of a holistic solution that helps creators get credit for their work and slows the spread of misinformation by ensuring consumers understand what changes were made to the content they are viewing. Launched at MAX 2019, Adobe is leading the initiative in collaboration with The New York Times Company, Twitter, Inc., Microsoft, BBC, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Truepic, WITNESS, CBC and many others.
Celebrating Creativity: Inspiration from the Masters
Adobe MAX features a roster of luminaries taking the virtual stage for sessions designed to inspire creators worldwide. The keynote session will be hosted by Conan O’Brien, and celebrity speakers and presenters featured throughout the conference include Zendaya, Ava DuVernay, Shepard Fairey, Gwyneth Paltrow, Awkwafina, Taika Waititi, Stanley Tucci, Tyler, the Creator, Common, Ai Weiwei, Wes Anderson and Roxane Gay, among others. A full list can be found here.
Comedian Chelsea Handler will host this year’s MAX Sneaks livestream, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at mind-bending creativity tools and technology being developed in Adobe Labs.
Pricing and Availability
All Creative Cloud subscribers—including those on such plans as individual, student, team, educational institution, government agency and enterprise—can download updates to Creative Cloud desktop software today. Additionally, mobile apps start rolling out globally today and can be downloaded in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
