At the tail end of his introductory keynote, Shantanu Narayen, President and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe, cued the waterworks a little inspiration with a video set to Willy Wonka's "Pure Imagination." Narayen shared that the video was "a tribute to the community we all belong in, "the creative sphere that encompassed the Adobe Max in-person audience, the online audience tuned in from all around the world to the live keynote, and creators of all ages and all levels who may soon have access to Adobe products.
From the very beginning of Adobe Max 2019 and interwoven throughout every demonstration and talk, Adobe circled back to two key focuses: creativity for all wherever inspiration strikes, and, incorporating user feedback into its products. Adobe wants the creative community to have access to their tools, whether they're using a phone, a tablet, or a computer. And it goes without saying that they want them to work.
It's the very same creative community that provided the integral feedback that inspired the enhancements to Creative Cloud Adobe announced today at Max. And while access, speed, and functionality are still Adobe's goals, Adobe users know that they should continue with a bit of caution: full features are not yet available for some releases, there have been known compatibility issues with macOS Catalina, and there is a history of bugs in the first release of a product. But the possibility of fast, mobile, functional features could indeed, to use Willy Wonka's words, spark "a world of pure imagination."
Scott Belsky delivers an introduction to Adobe Max 2019Credit: Adobe Max Live Stream
Whenever, Wherever. Not Just a Shakira Song
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Adobe InDesign. According to WinWorld PC, InDesign 1.0 required 48MB of RAM to run and could only operate on a computer with Windows 98. Flash forward to 2019, and Adobe has made it clear that they want the Creative Cloud Suite to function quickly across devices.
Today's announcements centered on expanding the Suite to mobile devices and supporting social video creators in their video editing on-the-go. The announcements included the expansion of Adobe Fresco to Windows (good news for Microsoft Surface users), the release of Photoshop on the iPad, the release of Adobe Photoshop Camera (a mobile app with "Photoshop magic"), an added TikTok export setting for Premiere Rush, and a preview of Adobe Illustrator on the iPad.
It's worth noting that while Photoshop on the iPad was released today, the Sensei features have not yet made it to the tablet (so, no Object Select Tool with Sensei for iPad users). But Emily Bogue, who demonstrated her iPad Photoshop skills live on-stage at Max, promised Sensei was coming soon.
Emily Bogue demonstrates Photoshop for the iPad
Driven by User Feedback
During Scott Belsky's keynote, he shared that over the last year, Adobe invited feedback from their users. The feedback generated three key focus points:
- Make Creative Cloud faster, more powerful, and more reliable
- The ability to create anywhere, anytime, with anyone...
- ...to explore new frontiers.
At several moments during the live demonstrations, speakers mentioned enhancements that came directly from user feedback, including the addition of speed modification in Premiere Rush, which Jason Levine shared was the number one requested feature for that software. For each demonstration, there was certainly an emphasis on speed as well, including the time it took to open documents or analyze an image...though it was possible, as Jason Levine quipped, that the speed was due to the HP ZBook. "#sponsored," he joked.
It's worth noting that not every piece of feedback generated an enhancement to a product. As reminded by one of our Facebook followers, Adobe Premiere's caption tool is in need of an update. Belsky did acknowledge the Adobe Community in his keynote, so perhaps it is worth continuing to let Adobe know about the features you'd like to see implemented in their software through the Adobe Community Forums.
The New Stuff
So what enhancements and changes did user feedback inspire? The updates announced on Adobe Max Day 1 include:
- Adobe Photoshop on iPad (App is available now and Sensei is coming)
- Adobe Fresco on Windows
- Adobe Photoshop Camera
- Auto-Reframe for Premiere
- TikTok Setting in Premiere Rush
- In-App Tutorials for Lightroom (including creating presets)
- Panorama Fill Edges in Lightroom
- Creative Cloud Libraries can be accessed in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.
- Creative Cloud App search function
- Object Select tool using Sensei in Adobe Photoshop
- Remove Background tool using Sensei in Adobe Photoshop
- Aero, Adobe's Augmented Reality software.
- Adobe Illustrator on iPad (coming!)
In "Pure Imagination," Willy Wonka sings "There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination." It's possible that listening to the Foo Fighters while seeing what other creators "imagine" can inspire you to pick up the Creative Cloud. The good news is that no matter what device you pick up, Adobe knows that you want the Suite to work and you want the Suite to work quickly. We'll be eager to hear, then, how Creative Suite 2020 works across devices.
Adobe Max continues tomorrow, November 5th!
Featured Image by Adobe
