More Adobe News for the Web

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#1

Adobe Launches Beta Versions of Photoshop, Illustrator for the Web

At its annual Max conference, the creative software giant reveals online versions of its flagship apps, along with the Creative Cloud management console.

Few people thought an app as complex and compute-intensive as Photoshop would be possible on the web. But Adobe today launched a web version of not just Photoshop, but also Illustrator, along with several new online experiences.

It’s not the entire set of Photoshop and Illustrator tools, but the web apps let you open documents and do basic editing. They also let you comment on and share work with collaborators. The Photoshop web app is labeled as beta, and Illustrator on the web is an invite-only private beta.

Click above to read the entire article :slight_smile:

#2

Yay - more work ruined.
At least it might stop people making text edits to PDFs and sending it back to you.

“I made some changes, good lucking finding them!”

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#3

This is only a prelude of things to come. Think subscription is bad? Wait until you can only work on something by uploading it to the web and working in a browser interface. Your computer becomes a fancy terminal for the Adobe machine. And people used to working in Canva will be right at home.

I’ll be sure to check future NDAs when that happens. I’m sure a Fortune 100 will just love their pre-launch assets floating around the intertubes.

#4

I watched the Adobe Max keynote session yesterday. Adobe’s big initiative seems to be pushing as much stuff to the cloud as possible to facilitate collaboration with teams. The online versions of these applications would mostly be for other members of the team to make fixes, changes, offer suggestions, etc.

In other words, Adobe thinks that groupthink and design by committee over the internet is the future of design. Their hyped-up happy talk examples showed designers being given input from other super-enthusiastic team members who would change background colors, switch typefaces, flop images, scribble on the design with change requests, etc. Everyone on the team would comment with written in-the-cloud replies, such as “Great Job, but make it pink.” and “Yeah, that really pops! We all love it!”

Although I can see some use for this in collaborative teams — especially those working remotely — I do not need non-design team members and clients scribbling on my work, changing typefaces, rotating images, and changing my color schemes. The very last thing I need is to provide clients with the ability to start monkeying around with the work I’m doing for them.

I’ve been on teams for years that used inCopy with InDesign, and although it worked, people were constantly stumbling over each other and making messes of things. Adobe seems to have taken this basic idea and extended it to their other apps in what seems like a convoluted, complicated, and confusing collaboration of everyone commenting on and changing whatever the team designers create.

Adobe’s existing collaborative tools that they’ve already built into some of their apps, such as the ability to share PDFs within the confines of the Adobe system, haven’t been especially useful to me. When I’ve tried using them, I get nothing but confused replies from clients asking me to send PDFs via email or DropBox or whatever other file transfer method they’re used to.

I suppose in some situations, with the right tightly knit teams, this collaborative approach could be useful. I can’t see myself having much use for it, though.

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#5

No - some major key stakeholders promised to buy a bunch of licenses if these things are implemented. And now they have - they will get a bunch of new batch sales.

You cannot idiot-proof anything.

Yes, it’s not implemented greatly - and it is confusing. And it doesn’t work as well as other systems - like some of the systems I’ve used in the past - you can create a hierarchy - and live comments direclty with the client - which are sent via email and the client can login see the comment and respond in real time.

Adobe’s implementation again - I fear for a key stakholder - was not great - and hasn’t really been improved on since it’s integration.

Like a lot of their new features - they are new and never improved on.

Same

I can’t really see myself sending off a project into the cloud.
Start working on another project.
Then have a bunch of random crap being implemented in around the design while I’m working on something else.

I can see it working if it needs to go from me to a member of hierarchy within their approval team - they can then ask their cohorts to mark it up - and agree on changes - and then the hierarchy then sends it back to me to implement the changes.

Of which I can make those changes - only with discussion and reasoning not to implement 99% of them.

Q. Why did you use Comic Sans?
A. bEcAuSe ItS a FuN fOnT

#6

I keep getting calls from Adobe to upgrade my “team” to a higher business level creative clowd. They do not understand the fact that yeah, 5 of us have licenses but we are not using the software in anything close to a collaborative endeavor. We take designer sh!t apart and make things with the pieces (think 3D fabricated signage.) I don’t need to pay double for cloud services we dont ever use. In fact I’d like a cheaper option with no cloud services, LOL!

But whatEVer. I’m sure someone with enough money found a use for the new bloatware so the rest of us just have to deal with it. Collateral damage, as they say.

1 Like
#7

I have no insight into the inner workings of Adobe or its decision-making procedures. However, it’s always seemed that many of their software initiatives and features were concocted by engineers who don’t quite understand the needs of the designers who use their products. Or maybe, as @Smurf2 said, Adobe is responding to their largest stakeholders’ and customers’ requests.

I can easily imagine a bunch of corporate MBAs sitting around a table and talking about how more of their employees are working from home. The MBA response to this new situation is, of course, “We need more collaborative tools.” What kind of tools, they have no clue, but working remotely obviously requires them, so they make a vague request to Adobe.

Adobe’s MBAs immediately see an opportunity to expand their cloud offerings as part of this new collaborative solution. It’s a win-win situation, and all the MBAs at both companies are happy. It gets passed down to Adobe’s software engineers to implement, and they build a solution that only an engineer could love. Finally, they pass off this ill-conceived mess to a few UI/UX designers to make pretty before hyping it at Adobe Max to all their designer customers who have no pressing need for any of it.

It’s all making sense now.

#8

But you can recognize that which will enable idiots and avoid it.

In theory, the Engineering-style reviews to which all my work is subjected could be conducted using these “collaborative tools,” and maybe there’d be some advantage to it in someone’s eyes. But personally, I wouldn’t want to empower my reviewers any more than PDF commenting does.

#9

I’ve rarely been able to convince clients or co-workers to use PDF commenting. I’ve finally given up on pushing the idea if they seem at all reluctant. Instead, the usual routine is to send off a PDF proof, then get feedback in either an email or a Word document.

This routine isn’t efficient, but it’s easy for them. Getting clients and coworkers to take the time to learn a new way of doing things — no matter how simple or worthwhile — is an uphill battle. Convincing them to use these new Adobe collaborative tools in an organized and productive way strikes me as an impossibility.

#10

One time a long time ago I had to deal with coordinating 30 authors of articles with sending content.

It was a mess. There were 30 different ways they were sending.

I built a word file as a template. And eventually got them all to use it. The word file had all my paragraph styles.

It was great. 99% accuracy.

Next was the amends. I sent a cheat sheet how to mark up using Adobe.
Again success.

The PDFs came back marked up correctly. Even better I had someone check that all the annotations were inserted correctly. And to tidy them up.

Next was a plugin for InDesign which automatically applied the changes, going one by one. I believe this plugin was the precursor to what is there now.

Finally, sent back down the chain.

It was a complex flow. But fair simpler than what was there.

Plus accuracy was a must. And compliance to workflow was required when submitting articles.

However, to get 30 different clients to do this outside of the controlled environment… As de Niro says…
Forget about it.

It’s fair easier to ask the client what works for them and work within their scope than trying to get them conform to your way

#11

Nice news for students