The Next Generation of Creativity

October brings with it some exciting events. For many, it is a time to find a fall festival or a pumpkin patch to pick out that perfect pumpkin for their Halloween jack-o-lantern. In our house, our celebrations that month include the birthday of our daughter. For many Adobe software enthusiasts, we know October also brings the annual Adobe MAX conference. This is where creative types gather to learn of all the new advances, tools and tricks Adobe has been working on over the past year and is releasing right NOW! I attended my first MAX conference 11 years ago in Chicago and I still remember the excitement of walking into the conference center ballroom to kick off the event with the keynote speakers. The overhead lights were out but the room was illuminated with ginormous video screens filled with colorful motion graphics set to music coming through a wall of loud speakers. It’s been a bit since I’ve attended a conference in person, but that doesn’t mean I have to miss it entirely. The keynotes are live online and the sessions are recorded and available soon after each session is held. I am still impressed every year with some of the jaw-dropping features I see Adobe coming out with for the applications I use most every day on my job at AWG.

There is a lot to share this year and I plan to post more later, but to start out with, here are some crazy exciting new features in Photoshop CC.

• Double-clicking on text to edit. This was something we could do in Illustrator and InDesign, but now we can do it in Photoshop too.
• You can now use the keyboard shortcut, Command + z, multiple times. There is no need to hold down the Alt or Option key at the same time for multiple steps backward.
• Adobe figured out people were using the scaling feature mostly for constrained proportions so they made that the default. You don’t have to hold down the shift key unless you want to scale without constraining the proportion.
• When cutting out a background, you can select a subject with 1 click, even when the subject consists of multiple colors.
• Masks are easier now and live blend modes for masks allow you to see what each mode looks like before selecting the mode. This is similar to seeing a sample of the font in the font drop-down menu without having to apply the font to your text to see what it looks like.
• The reference point of an object on the screen is now hidden by default. This prevents you from accidentally grabbing and moving the point instead of the object when the object is very small.

I’ll be back with more, including some advances in Augmented Reality and some inspirational words from well-known creatives like Ron Howard!