Day 232

Adobe Creative Cloud

(visit the CC website)

On 26th November I had this pleasure to visit the Adobe's Conference / Meeting organised by +Adobe UK and I would like to share with you some of my thoughts, observations about CC (Creative Cloud) idea, projects and the meeting itself.

View Larger Map

Strangely enough (for me) the event took place in Edinburgh and will happen next week in Bristol. The central area of UK has been completely ignored by +AdobeSystems. And I'm saying it because I wouldn't have drive all the way from Manchester to Scotland's capital to take a part in the event (yes!, I'm lazy) Anyway it was a good day!

The registration started at 8am (toooo early... kidding, was good) and Adobe didn't skimp funds for the venue. Entire Vue Pictures has been for us for most of the day.

Presence recording went smoothly and some great flasks with coffee said welcome to me.

As the show should start at 9:00am we have been entertained by the Creative Wall crew who let all the guests paint on it with digital sprays...

I didn't realize that Adobe has a gadget like this. I've seen some fantastic works by many attendants. Could you imagine that a graffiti artist or T-shirts (fashion) maker (...sorry designer) could get one like this to his lounge to create awesome designs. Or maybe as a collaborative process within a business, or a bank? That would be great.

I was amazed by work one the guys who is, as he told me, #PaintShopPRO and #AdobeIllustratorCS4 user +303arts  - and this is what he has painted came out with... And funny enough, although I'm not a great fan of painting the walls and graffiti in general it did looked like a proper piece of art... I'll love it :)

Moving forward, we have been invited to Screen 1 to sit down. Obviously I had to chase my way to the very first row, next to the speakers to be able to take some snapshots during the event. 

After a short introduction made by this man... I forgot to write down his name, we went straight into details of CC functionalities. The very first one was +Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and +Adobe Photoshop  and their new functionalities and especially a seamless work-flow between these two! The presentation has been given by +Richard Curtis 

Main functionalities that I found out about during this first presentation (you may now laugh) are:

For Lightroom 5 development:

- Radial Adaptation Filters existence

- Continuous Spot (healing) brush with artificial intelligence (whoha! this functionality has been available in Apple's Aperture since version 3 came out a while back and presented by +ApertureExpert  )
- New camera RAW to CC compatibility 
- Open as Smart Object functions (I'm lovin' it - not the McD way :)))) 

Sill missing is the function to use .PSD files as a collection and import support. You still can't put into your LR library those files to keep track of them (I understand that this functionality, to work as a database array is still being reserved with Bridge), however keeping a simple record of the file within Lightroom would be very helpful. The biggest issue I have is that I have no clue about Bridge at all!

Although it's missing this catalogue functionality, these few new (to me) features got me now to seriously consider the switch to Adobe's Lightroom only from Aperture...

For Adobe Photoshop CC (so many improvements that can't even recall all of them):

- Price :) - that's the winner anyway (starts from Creative Cloud - Photoshop Photography Program - Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5 for £8.78/month)
- Faster file loading into App (To what I've compare it is much slower on saving ...)
- Tilt Shift Filters
-32bit HDR processing improvements

There is however an issue, that, with the high resolution displays fe. on the retina display if you would try to do HDR merge function you will receive a nice white rectangle over part of the image. It affects #MacBookPro with retina display or some other very high resolution screens. For using post HDR merge function the problem disappear, so it should not affect your workflow at all, but it's a minor issue just to pre-worn you. The Artificial Intelligence within Pro HDR Merge in Photoshop also struggles with correct EV recognition (at least with RAW images coming from my Canon 5D MK II) 

I have more or less managed to sort this issue out?!:

Next segment of presentation was about Adobe Video production workflow. It was to my surprise demonstrated on the Windows based machine... that has frozen at the end BTW... - but yet to prove that Adobe's products are multi-platform capable. The presentation was not only very well prepared but was funny and very interestingly performed by Mr Niels Stevens  (who is not available on G+).

Most of the information I have previously picked up from +Adobe TV website as well as from this +creativeLIVE training (that I fully recommend to anybody who is interesting to find out everything about how to get transition from being #photographer to become #cinematographer -Art of Film-making. ) has been well verified and updated and upgraded after that keynote! The Story is the best initial work management text editor that saves money and time! Awesome feature for semi-pro & pro productions (you might not need it for producing your podcast - but I could help a bit). Next on was the unknown icon Pl !!!!!

 
Yeaha... It's Prelude... the fastest tool to align your shoots with the script, compare, crate rough cuts to match the script. There is no editing, just text marking, creating control points, key points and Text2Speech and Speech2Txt tools. To sum up Adobe Prelude is a quick and efficient prep for #AdobePremierePro where you will start putting everything together from L-Cuts, Transitions to some more advanced transcoders. (As a part of my workflow I would run PluralEyes as my video line is completed to make sure I have the audio ready and synced so I could skip audio correction a bit, but... that's my thinking process)
 
When your video line is ready and you are happy with your film layout, transitions and other visual staff, it's time for Computer based Graphics effects using #AdobeAftereffects. In here the cool novum is the partnership of +AdobeSystems with +MAXON CINEMA 4D so you could build your 3D/4D graphics within AE... WOW! Here also the RefineEdge tool from Photoshop became available aside of new surface analytics's and many more. 

Finally as it must become the masterpiece there is time for #Audition where you work with audio, cleaning, levelling and... healing it - like in Photoshop with the healing brush ... another WOW!

Last step is to make sure you have the right clip match and for that purpose you will use the #AdobeSpeedGrade (I'm not getting why Speed... some of the app naming is very confusing for me an absolute beginner) Basically SG will allow you to colour correct certain takes, stages, giving the movie a final, matching look and feel.


When it's all ready you can publish using the #MediaEncoder... I will not even try to go there... but this machinery is very powerful and pretty much complete. ! Just to let you all know, about using best codec for digital image distribution and save you tons of time, if you have shoot your footage using DSLR - please use QuickTime codec for export for best performance !

Unfortunately that's all I know about the video. It's so mainly because I've started to make something with it on Adobe's software on video side, maybe 2 weeks ago :)

That has finished the morning session at 1200. I found morning segment very intense, with few WOW's and in general it was very well prepared. I did felt that Adobe is going to the 'good' direction with their cloud based solutions. I was even able to pick +Richard Curtis brain about some Photoshop issues I have mentioned you earlier :) Awesome. 

FOOD - Lunch :))))))

Afternoon was little bit different. 

It was more to me about Adobe's vision, presenting company idea of how to collaborate, build team work using the cloud. Design and Publishing CC that has covered InDesign, Typekit, Mobile App building, Muse and some oher cool features including the collaboration model for Creative Cloud.

The Photoshop 3D capabilities got my attention in full. The feature of material reflection's and glow possibilities was another WOW from me. Also the model of 2Dimage + 3Dmodel placing & painting got my WOW! 

Later we have been presented with possibility to use Behance PRO as a professional portfolio website (here I need to say pass - I'm a +SmugMug lover here http://portfolia.smugmug.com that allow me to sell right out of the box and it has 20+ more themes than Behance PRO) however the standard version as a part of the collaborative source of contacts where you may share your work with other artists and coleagues, without a public representation, is wonderfull! It shall help you get valuable feedback and some inspiration from watching others work. 

As the last, afternoon's session we have seen +IONA WALTERS who presented the web design features of the CC suite... kind of... as her performance was the most incomplete and disorganised that afternoon. I learn though what are the possible workflow but the hiccups she had tying to explain or show us the web performance was just so so so boring that I barely could stay awake... shame as the product complexity was looking astonishing but it just wasn't well presented to the audience. Another thing, that I just wished to mention, that I could be biased as I hate coding, and Iona's presentation included lot of lines of code to deal with... aghhhhrrrrr - so it might be me only :)

Lets wrap the day up...

Adobe seems to be putting some greater philosophy behind the Creative Cloud solution. I couldn't tell if that's legitimate intention or is it just, well put marketing. However it works well on me. I did felt like the Adobe System for the very first time is raising my heart to drive me to do something with them...It allows many more people to have access to tools thanks to subscription model, before you needed to have a thick wallet to start, now you got it for a price of 3 coffees within a month!

Creative Cloud could potentially change the entire point of view at the collaborative options of fe. various teams coming from the different sites around the world, from different backgrounds, working over the same project at it's different stages. All that seems to be unique and very innovatory functionality.

Tools that we have been presented with during that day, are more than sufficient to run actively the entire marketing, graphics, and animation business or even the whole department of PR for as little as £50 a month. Freedom of data migration with a use of the CC platform, Behance and sync Settings options are outstanding, and there is no other competitor currently on the market who could go in the Adobes way. If you are thinking of going to mobile apps with the content you'll deliver this is also the cheapest solution on the market at the moment. All the 3rd party providers will charge you hundreds or thousands of pounds to give you same functions (only they can do the coding bit :).

I'm a great fan of Apple's products but on their side of services with current verions of #FinalCutX, #LogicX and #Aperture, Apple is currently behind Adobe. It might all get changed as soon as we will see the new #MacPro line comes out with some more great software (I hope) so to keep the competition working for the consumers, but for now they are loosing big time in my option.

I do say that with a bleeding heart... but Adobe is getting much closer to me with their tools options. I think there is still time for development for Adobe, where they could improve on iPhoto-Bridge-Lightroom integration,  iTunes access for all the audio tracks, that would so helpful, more access to the files and content, not from bridge only on a Mac side but from the OS...

It looks like for storage, publication, collaboration and backup we can't find at the current time, no other services that the Creative Cloud. The iCloud is kind of there, but it's missing a lot.

It is obviously something scary that we have all of our files out there in the cloud, and we expose them to several types of risks, every day. But the communication's freedom... isn't it worth it? You gain however the ability to get all the updates as they arrive, like on your iPhone (even Android's #KitKat is going that way), You can get new features with app updates, get bugs removed from the code and many, many other things done... those good ones, hopefully only :)

You have to judge it yourself. 

CC is opening great features for all users along variety of sectors. That;s good :)))

So for those who has been asking the question about CC please find this answer as my most objective, although I'm an Apple fanatic... Adobe CC today, is worth every single penny (cent)  +Frederick Van Johnson  and all of you +This Week in Photo (TWiP) subscribers who has been listening to that show wondering about, is the CC a good solution...

As per event, it was well organised, managed and there have been only few minor distortions due to hardware and software issues (platform obviously - not Adobe products ;) )The speaker were knowledgeable and they know how to get audience interest (most of them) what you could here during the breaks.  The Creative Wall was a great gadget and good fun, coffee was strong as it should be and food was more than enough. There ware the contests for the attendances with bespoke CC umbrella to win (I won one heheh).  The only problem I had was just the distance... please next time come closer to #Manchester

Good day, head packed with informations. Well done Adobe!
 

All logo, screen shoots have been used for information purposes and they were published by +AdobeSystems Adobe UK

Thanks for stopping by (excuse my English, I'm doing my best)
Michal