Adobe Creative Cloud 2015 New Features
The new Creative Cloud 2015 is now available, with new features and functions to the suite of Adobe’s applications.
The full cloud suite grants you access to 20+ creative desktop and mobile apps including Photoshop CC, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Dreamweaver and more. Perfect if you are in the creative industry, but most of us wouldn’t require access to the full suite of applications. For photographers, access to Photoshop and Lightroom would only require $13 per month.
| Price Plan | Photography | Single App | Complete |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual | 13.00 | 26.00 | 66.00 |
| Students / Educators | 13.00 | – | 26.00 |
What’s New
In CC 2015, here’s the full list of new features. To me, major changes are the new Artboards for Photoshop, which is new way to design cross device user experiences in a single Photoshop document (imagine a design used across a laptop, tablet and mobile phone device) to deliver the same coherent message.
Lightroom CC and Photoshop Camera Raw also gain the new Dehaze feature. Dehaze is a filter that eliminates fog and haze from photos, including underwater shots, for startlingly clear images. Might be useful in Singapore, with our perennial haze problems. It works both ways, and haze can also be added to a photo for artistic effect.
Here’s two haze photos which originated from SBR and Yahoo! Singapore. The haze has been a common sight in Singapore in recent years, so wanted to see how the photos after editing turns out. The dehaze feature “is based on a physical model that tries to estimate the amount of light transmission and how it varies across the picture”. It looks like the haze in Singapore is a little too strong. It works to an extent, but to be fair, you would see better results when applied to RAW photos instead.
Another new element in Photoshop CC 2015 is faster, easier image export. There’s a redesigned export function that does all in one click. Personally, I still prefer the save the web which still exists as a Legacy feature.
There’s stronger emphasis this year with Adobe CreativeSync, which is great. It is easy to start from a connected mobile app and then switch to desktop or other apps. For example, a photo taken on your phone can be imported and edited directly with Lightroom Mobile. I liked that the photos can be automatically sync to the Creative Cloud, and I can then access them on Lightroom desktop for direct editing and publishing.
Also, the new CC 2015 promises speed and performance updates too. For example, Illustrator CC is now 10 times faster. But that’s because it’s the last of the Creative Cloud apps to get Adobe’s Mercury engine, which uses your GPU to accelerate common actions.
With the new update, there’s also Adobe Stock. Over 40 million photos, vector graphics and illustrations accessible directly within CC desktop apps. There will continually be new content added, and photographers and designers can contribute content too. However, it is not available yet in Singapore, but with plans to be introduced in the near future. It’s a convenient way to access
The whole Creative Cloud is huge, and I have only dabbled the surface of Photoshop, Lightroom and Premiere previously. I stopped using Photoshop since I left school and switched to Gimp (which is free – for the poor folks like me). But Photoshop CC 2015 is really miles ahead in terms of features. The improvements this year for Photoshop (Dehaze and Stock) are rather modest compared to previous, but useful. And if you have already have a paid subscription from last year, then you would have access to all these new features too.
Whether you are a fan of the cloud model or the previous standalone is subjective, but that’s the direction that Adobe has taken, and personally, I think the new model makes more sense as Adobe apps used to be crazily expensive. The new features this year alongside with Adobe stock demonstrate a strong emphasis to pay what you need, and greater synergy across the different applications. This gives the customers greater flexibility.