Adobe has announced the latest update to its Creative Cloud suite at the Adobe Max conference held in Las Vegas. We have reported on several of the new features throughout the year as they were previewed at IBC and in numerous teaser videos, but summarised below are the most significant updates for each application.
Photoshop CC
- The ability to open and edit 360 panoramic images
- New curvature pen tool.
- Variable fonts.
- Kylebrush.com brushes included.
- Support for Microsoft Dial.
- Context aware Properties panel.
- Improved image resizing.
- A new learn panel to help new users get acclimatized with the software.
- Many UI and performance improvements.
See the full list of Photoshop improvements here.
Illustrator CC
- A new puppet warp tool, similar to the feature of the same name in Photoshop.
- Context aware Properties panel.
- Cineware integration.
- Variable fonts.
- Art board improvements allowing up to 1000 art boards per document.
See the full list of illustrator improvements here.
Dimension
This application has been available in beta for a while under the name Project Felix. Now out of beta and rebadged as Dimension CC, it allows you to integrate 3D models onto a 2D backdrop, with options to customise materials and textures and add lighting. It’s also possible to estimate environment lighting from the backplate to integrate the 3D components more convincingly. You can read more about Dimension CC here.
XD
Another project emerging from its beta period is Adobe XD CC, a UI design tool for creating prototypes and communicating design ideas. You can find out more about it here.
Lightroom
Lightroom has been split into two versions. A completely rewritten lightroom with versions for tablet, mobile and desktop has adopted the CC suffix, while the original version is now renamed Lightroom Classic. Lightroom CC is aimed at the cloud, adds new social features and uses Sensai, Adobe’s AI technology, to identify and apply tags to the contents of images. Find out more about Lightroom here.
Character Animator
Character animator, a 2D bone based animation tool, is now is out of beta and adds several new features:
- Custom named triggers.
- Pose to pose animation from live performances.
- Tracked or manually controlled pupil movement.
- New behaviours including collision physics, layer picker and faders.
- Lip syncing and rigging improvements.
Find out more about Character Animator here.
After Effects
After Effect’s new features were previously announced at IBC so no surprises here, the most notable improvements include:
- Tools for for 360/VR editing allowing users to undistort and edit stitched videos, apply effects, and add titles and other elements to 360 degree projects.
- New tools for creating data driven animations by importing JSON data files as footage.
- Expressions access to mask and shape points.
- The inclusion of Cinema 4D Lite R19.
- A visual map for keyboard shortcuts, performance enhancements.
See the full list of After Effects improvements here.
Premiere Pro
Many new features in Premier Pro come from the acquisition of Mettle Skybox earlier in the year. These are integrated into the latest release bringing new features for working with 360 and VR content. Other new features include:
- The ability to have multiple projects open simultaneously and cut/paste between them.
- Motion graphics panel and templates to simplify adding animated titles and graphics elements.
- Team Projects collaborative tools for parallel editing and feedback.
- Improved social publishing in Media Encoder.
See the full list of Premiere Pro improvements here.
Pricing
The rental price in the North American market is set to rise by 6% for individual and single license annual plans. For team plans a price increase of 14% is expected. You can read more at the bottom of the new versions announcement post on the Adobe Max blog. There is no information about price changes in other territories.
“The rental price in the North American market is set to rise by 6% for individual and single license annual plans. For team plans a price increase of 14% is expected.”
This is good thing for Affinity Products and for Black Magic Software.
They are trying to milk more money because of mettle skybox investment?
But I must admit that first time there is few very good and useful new features, but it take long time, and biggest one (mettle’s skybox) was production ready plugin from 3rd part developer. So Adobe didn’t make this innovation, they just bought it. But its good addition anyway… It just makes me think that is this the way how they will improve their softwares in the future? Rental payments, and when they need innovations to keep customers happy they just buy some software and integrate it, then they will rise rental price again?
When will they just go ahead, bite the bullet and offer $1 Bil for C4D. Then they will crush.
I hope they won’t do it… If they buy C4D that will mean sure dead for C4D development 🙁 no more innovations. But after that there would be Houdini, Modo, Blender and LightWave left, then I would go with Houdini and (Blender or Modo) combination…
has Ps gone to node tech yet?
Only in our dreams…
Lazy mouse and symmetry in Photoshop are welcome features. Still waiting for the multi EXR support and 32bits workflow improvements.
Full MultiEXR Support for latest exr-specs is available, you can get it for free from:
http://www.exr-io.com
32bit is a different story. I do not see in the near future a solution for it inside Photoshop. They need to Change stuff deep inside the core to get it work 🙁
Dear friend Igor Posavec, maybe you and your friends, by any chance, are preparing a big surprise about our beloved Bones Pro plugin for the coming months? Maybe a revolutionary 5.0 version?
With Affinity as competition I would of assumed Adobe would of made their subscriptions more appealing (lower priced).. There are so many great alternatives to Adobe these days, it’s tough to justify the subscription model.
Remember, Adobe CC includes A LOT more than just Photoshop. There are some other high-value and popular software included in the Adobe subscription that is really hard to find alternatives for, such as After Effects and Indesign. And even if you find alternatives to Premiere, Illustrator, Lightroom, Audition, Acrobat, Media Encoder and Bridge – Adobe lets you use a remarkable amount of excellent software for a fairly low price. Not many subscriptions can claim the same.
Remember that Adobe CC was meant to be always updated software, no upgrades, always up to date software with daily builds and newest features. That’s what they said if i remember right that was their sales pitch – then we got CC2014, CC2015, CC2016, CC2017 and now CC2018 (the only one which brings very useful features finally). So, its like CS but only rental. And how about new features? This was first time when CC got many useful features but most of them are just 3rd part plugins which Adobe bought and integrated into their software and they make rental price higher because of their innovation/investments (mettle skybox – those who have bought this plugin separately will have nothing special in this update but they still need to pay more because of this integration – this is the way adobe innovate – and soon we will have this “content aware video fill” which is most likely fayteq’s fayout plugin).
Adobe CC price really is quite affordable but when you stop paying it then your projects will be hostages – then there is no way to edit them or convert them anymore. Thankfully Affinity supports very well photoshop formats.
With Affinity the only price is about 50€ – no hostage files – no blackmail – no surprise with new high rental prices on next month. just one payment (until version 2.0 will be released – until you want / need to upgrade and support software developer if they are going right way in development – 1.5 got lots of good features for free and i can’t wait what 2.0 will bring up)
Affinity has also good Designer software which is already better in performance compared to illustrator but there is features which are still missing from designer but its still good software and fast and also user friendly and it can export pdf files without problems. Affinity Designer is also about 50€ and one payment (and already 3 years free updates so it is very affordable)
Replacing premiere – DaVinci Resolve (there is also free version with 4k/uhd support – so its 0€ and free version is pretty good for basic editing – there is also studio version with more advanced features with 300$ price).
Replacing After effects – Black Magic Fusion – (also free version – and also 4k/uhd support – sure free version won’t include optical flow but you can use blender to track your footage with optical flow – or you can buy fusion studio with 300$ – and no need to worry that your projects will be hostages if you don’t want to upgrade – unless your operating systems requires it)
Audition alternative/replace – DaVinci Resolve (has new audio tools), Audacity (free opensource software), Sound Forge, Reaper, or one of the most used pro softwares – ProTools, Nuendo (these were standard before audition, and these are still great softwares.) Btw. There is free version for ProTools (first) and Avid Media Comoposer (first) too 🙂
Lightroom alternatives – rawtherapee (free), Capture One (amazing software), silkypix, dxo softwarews, acdsee softwares, Luminar
And Affinity will release competitor for adobe indesigner. The acrobat itself is quite impractical and it has had lots of security holes like flash did. Future internet will be more build on standards so that is why flash will be killed and next thing will be acrobat which will be replaced with other open source format.
My thoughts are that the only thing what makes Adobe to buy new tech for CC products and integrate them into CC pipeline is most probably because of new competition in industry (Serif/Affinity, BlackMagic Design, Magix, Avid, Macphun/Skylum, Phase One, Pixelmator Pro, even old industry standard Quark has started made new progress etc.) – so I am very thankful for these companies to make new competition and for new innovation. It looks like there is future for all of us. Also for Adobe CC customers who benefits from this competition because these competitors are the one who make adobe try. If competition dies – then adobe can stop their innovation (no need to buy new tech and integrate – no need for coders who will update their software) – if competition dies then adobe can just cash with subscription model – no need for updates – just cash flow because of rental / hostage (blackmail) model. So lets be thankful because adobe has no monopoly yet and because they have left their innovation team sleeping 🙂 These 3rd part plugin integrations are just artificial respiration.
+1 to all this… but people seems to not understand in what kind of risky situation they are with this “rental-hostage” model…