creative cloud

The key topic of discussion at tonight's LA Web Professionals Group meeting, where Deke was presenting some live Deke's Techniques, was Adobe's announcement about the Creative Cloud. The upshot: Rather than release Creative Suite 7, all updates to Photoshop and its creative cousins will now come via a Creative Cloud subscription. In other words, if you want the new features in the latest version of Photoshop, you're going to get them delivered via the cloud. 

This is necessarily causing some confusion and questions for Creative Suite users. I've got two useful sources for information on "Photoshop CC." If your questions are primarily about obtaining, installing, and using Creative Cloud, check out this FAQ from Photoshop's Chief Customer Advocate (and friend of dekeOnline) Jeff Tranberry. If you want to know why you might care to obtain, install, and use Photoshop CC, then check out Deke's new Preview of Photoshop Creative Cloud's new features at lynda.com. If you're not a member of lynda.com, you can get a free week's trial to check it out at lynda.com/deke.  Read more » 

Yep, Adobe has officially announced CS6, and along with it, the Creative Cloud upon which it will collaboratively float. Bottom line, for $49 a month (and less if you're a long-term Adobe license holder) you can get access to the entire Creative Suite, even all those apps that you didn't know existed, let alone what they might do for you. You can watch the Adobe announcement here. During the presentation, there are some quick sneak peaks at features in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, and Dreamweaver CS6, and the second half of the show demonstrates a bunch of cool collaborative features of the Creative Cloud. (Unfortunately, you can't skip to the second half at the moment, so enjoy the celebration first or time your viewing to catch Jeff Veen's presentation during the last 20-ish minutes.) 

Update: Later in the day, our good friend John Nack wrote up the clearest, kindest run-down on Creative Cloud pricing I've seen. 

^{Photo by Jim Heid}

If you really want to see the features of the CS6 applications, however, let me self-servingly point you to this page at lynda.com, where you'll see links to all the New Features courses in which creative experts take a detailed look at each of the new features in the CS6 suite. Of course, it includes the all-free-for-now Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview course from Deke, as well as links to offerings from Friends-of-Deke: Chris Orwig (on Photoshop for Photographers), James Williamson (on Dreamweaver), Justin Seeley (on Illustrator), and Anne-Marie Concepcion (on InDesign). During the next month, you'll find that this page will populate with some more CS6 titles, including a certain One-on-One series. If you're not a member of lynda.com, you can get a free 7-day trial at lynda.com/deke and you can always watch the blue-linked movies in any course Table of Contents. They're unlocked for everyone, all the time. You're welcome.  Read more »