Sam Gilbey...

#CS6 #CreativeCloud Adobe CS6 launch (Taken with instagram)

Had an interesting evening at the Creative Cloud launch event last night. Amidst the expected hyperbole and inevitable talk of the latest version(s) being bigger and better, there were some really interesting details in there too.

Live demos of improvements ranged from the highly impressive/dramatic (such as refined subtleties for the Photoshop’s patch tool), to the highly useful/aka I can’t believe it took them so long to add this (such as finally allowing us to apply gradients to strokes in Illustrator –yes!). That said, perhaps most interesting was seeing how Adobe are trying to help digital designers cater more intuitively for the plethora of resolutions and formats they’re often outputting to, via ‘adaptive’ layouts in both InDesign and Dreamweaver.

They were also keen to emphasis Flash’s ability to export to HTML5 (and iOS apps). In the light of the Flash player’s fall from ubiquity running counter to the growth in mobile, clearly this is something they’ve ‘had’ to do to keep the application relevant, but still, this will no doubt be welcome to many designers who’ve spent years working with tweens and timelines, including myself.

Initially I was less convinced about their ‘Creative Cloud’ in that I’ve been using dropbox for years and have no reason to move away from that at the moment, not least because I can share work with my clients for free. But allowing users access to everything via a monthly fee certainly feels like an interesting way for them to go. Naturally, for students who can’t afford to spend, say, £2500 up front on the full Master Collection, at £47 per month (£27 for existing CS users as an introductory offer)  the subscription is going to be more realistic, although this gives you ’just’ 20GB of space.

Just taking a quick look on Amazon, It would cost me around £960 to upgrade from CS5 though, so joining the Creative Cloud for just over £27 per month would effectively give me 35 months of usage. I didn’t feel the need to upgrade to CS5.5, and CS5 launched in April 2010. Therefore the value is actually very good, if you consider that it will probably be 24 months before CS7 (or whatever it ends up being called) launches.

So, although I don’t need any more syncing storage as such, the deal is actually a pretty good one, of course tempered by the usual frustration that the UK prices for both the separate apps and the cloud are significantly higher than for users in the States.

Money aside, improved workflow is always the key of course, and with performance improvements features such as being able to save a large file in Photoshop while you continue to work on it (as well as what at least appears to be a more refined interface), I’m happy to admit that an upgrade is certainly on the cards for me.

It’s important to go into these things with a slightly cynical hat on, but while it’s hard to say for sure until you’re using the applications day in, day out, overall it seems that Adobe have put together a fairly balanced update which will likely be welcomed by existing users across print, digital and motion, and perhaps thanks to some refined interfaces, will reduce the barrier to entry for new users somewhat too.

Finally, thanks to David Cousens for his assistance getting me into the ‘shindig’ in the first place.