Adobe Creative Cloud: What the Change Means

The new Adobe Creative Cloud

This past week, Adobe released its upgrade of Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) to Adobe Creative Cloud (CC). The change has caused a passionate discussion in the industry because Adobe is eliminating updates delivered through the traditional software model and only offer the Creative Cloud through its subscription service. This carries several significant implications for producers and editors whose workflow depends on what was the Adobe Creative Suite. I’m an Adobe Creative Cloud member and the Adobe platform has been my suite of choice for some time now. Personally, I see the benefits outweighing the negatives. This is part one of a series on what this transition means for Adobe users. Let’s look at some of what this transition means.

Editors are doing more

There is a trend in which traditional video editors are being required to be greater generalists. Common creative roles are changing, not every production is going to touch multiple hands in the post-production pipeline. The editor is creating graphics, grading footage, and mixing down audio. The applications available through the Adobe Creative Cloud allow more users to experiment with tools they haven’t used in the past. This gives them a wider foundation and the ability to tackle more jobs while expressing more of their personal creativity into all facets of their work. It’s apparent Adobe is aware of this and it shows in the new tool sets being offered and in the increased integration of applications in the Creative Cloud.

Creative Cloud Workflow

The increased workflow integration is the benefit I’m most excited about. It’s evident in Adobe’s promotional material the lines are being blurred, there’s more you can do. The message they’re sending is “don’t just make the video, surround it with content and publish it.” Looking at the Adobe Creative Cloud of video professionals web page, it’s easy to see that Adobe is aware of the video professional’s need to not only generate content but distribute their video work and surround it with supporting collateral.

With each previous release of the Creative Suite, Adobe user’s experienced increased interaction between the different applications. I see this trend continuing, in part through the way the applications interact and in part because of new features to several applications. Primarily, video producers are given all the tools they need for a thorough post-production pipeline. After Effects and Premiere continue grow closer as they’re joined at the hip. Speed Grade now allows for a smoother transition back and forth into Premiere. While Audition has additional finishing tools to help maintain consistent output levels. Prelude is seeing much more attention as a means of ingest and setting up the Adobe workflow to contain rich metadata.

It’s notable that Encore CS6, Adobe’s DVD authoring tool, did not receive an upgrade into the Creative Cloud. This plays into my thoughts that Adobe recognizes the trend of video being pervasive content, not an individual element with its own method of delivery. We find video on multiple devices, delivered through apps and the web. DVD and Blu-ray standards aren’t changing the way web and mobile technologies are, and as such, there’s not an urgent need to upgrade applications which already work as they need to.

What’s interesting is the amount support Adobe is giving to video distribution outside of physical media. Current members of the Creative Cloud, which launched with CS6 applications last year, already had the ability to generate iOS apps through the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite using InDesign CS6. Some folks in the video industry may raise their eyebrow at InDesign, a tradition print layout program, as being part of the video workflow. The truth is, InDesign is far from an isolated print application. InDesign is now a robust content layout tool whether it’s print, digital, or both. The ability to create mobile apps is also available through the Adobe Edge collection of applications in Adobe Creative Cloud and through the use of Dreamweaver CC with Adobe PhoneGap Build. I’m sure this isn’t an easy jump for a video professional to crossover and start building mobile apps. However, it does allow for a smoother transition from the content creator to the engineer building the delivery app.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and what roadblocks will come up along the way, but it’s definitely an exciting time to see the expanse of distribution for video content and seeing the tools to make it happen firsthand.

Keep an eye out for upcoming posts here on the Rampant blog as we’ll be discussing more of the change from CS6 to Adobe Creative Cloud.

 

 

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