Adobe MAX 2014: Creative Design Is Truly Unleashed on Mobile
One of the knocks on tablets and smartphones by creative professionals is that they are not ideal tools for using graphics-intensive software like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. But those gripes are soon to be so yesterday, now that Adobe has announced a set of free iOS apps that allow users to leverage their creativity as easily on mobile devices as they do on the desktop, according to a report from Pocket-Lint.
The company showed off the new mobile apps at its annual Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles on Monday.
[Adobe] calls the new line up its "mobile canvas" and what's more, you don't even have to wait until after the keynote to download them. They are already available on the iTunes App Store for free, although you will need an Adobe ID and Creative Cloud subscription or free Creative Cloud storage membership to make the most of them.
Some of these apps are grouped and organized by their desktop counterparts. They offer simpler, more defined and straightforward functionality rather than trying to completely replicate the desktop version in mobile. For example, Illustrator Draw allows users to create free-form vector art, and that’s it. This single purpose makes it easier for users to navigate and understand the app.
Other apps, however, are completely new and built specifically for mobile. Adobe Shape, for example, allows users to take pictures with their mobile devices and convert those images into vector drawings, which can then be imported to the desktop version of Illustrator for further manipulation. Similarly, Adobe Brush takes the brush functionality of Photoshop and turns it into a single-purpose app. Users can take photos of anything and turn those images into a brush that can be used on the desktop version of Photoshop.
People witnessing the announcement at Adobe Max were pumped up about the new mobile apps that Adobe unveiled. The word “magic” was used quite often — as was the phrase “tears of joy.”
Watching #adobemax and crying tears of joy… #adobeshape thank you for existing <3 pic.twitter.com/EQibMgopNi
— Johanna (@MandelCat) October 6, 2014
#adobemax photoshop sketch is magic. Anything u can take a picture of can be made into a brush.
— Sasha Braude (@sbraude) October 6, 2014
"You can make a brush with anything you can capture with your camera." —@ericsnowden demos @Adobe Brush #AdobeMAX pic.twitter.com/YYDRbCLdFE
— Tam Vo (@tamiam) October 6, 2014
We often talk about how mobile unleashes valuable productivity in organizations in numerous ways. With Adobe’s new apps, graphic and creative design can be unchained from the desktop and added to that list of tasks that can be accomplished on a mobile device.
