Adobe has been in the market for more than 30 years offering creative solutions to individuals and companies through its programs and tools. Its professional quality and versatility in producing creative projects for audio, video, photos, websites, and more have kept the company a market leader. What is the Creative Cloud and what benefits does it offer? I will explain everything you need to know about the company’s best-selling package in this Adobe Creative Cloud Review.
Currently, there are 2 ways to use any of the Adobe software: getting an individual program and access to one of the more than 20 available or opting for the full Creative Cloud, where you can access the entire collection and several extras.
What is Adobe Creative Cloud?
The Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of more than 20 programs, tools, and services for composing and editing in different creative industries, such as:
- Graphic design
- Video edition
- Illustration and animation
- Photography (editing and organization)
- Web development
- Audio Edition
- And more.
It also includes a group of applications for mobile devices, cloud storage services, resources, tutorials, and various online tools and/or add-ons for its subscribers.
The Creative Cloud replaces Adobe’s formerly popular Creative Suite, which was sold through licensing and was discontinued in favor of the subscription method. I will talk more about this in the pricing section at the end of the article.
What applications, tools, and services are included in the Adobe Creative Cloud?
The Adobe Creative Cloud includes more than 20 applications available to everyone, which you can download and install as you use them. You don’t need to download all of them to start using, for example, Photoshop. Each program is downloaded and installed individually.
Here is a small summary of what each can do:
Photoshop
Photoshop is a program for creating and editing images, photographs, and designs. You can edit and manipulate any photograph. It is one of Adobe’s leading software and is used by graphic design professionals, photographers, and web designers. It is multiplatform, it works on Windows, Mac, and recently Ipad.
Illustrator
Illustrator is a vector graphics editing program, used in the design world for the creation of illustrations, logos, fonts, and all types of digital drawings. Together with Photoshop, they make up the leading programs in graphic design, Illustrator being the most used by illustration professionals worldwide. It offers multiplatform compatibility.
InDesign
InDesign is an editorial design application that can be used to create and lay out documents of all kinds and do digital page composition. For the creation of pages for magazines, e-books, PDF files, newspapers, brochures, leaflets, flyers, and more. If you need to create text for reading in any format, InDesign is the program for you. Number one at a professional level and a standard in the publishing industry.
Adobe Creative Cloud Review | Adobe XD
Adobe XD or Experience Design is Adobe’s bet on the market for the design of prototype web pages, mobile apps, games, interfaces, and more.
In this program, you can design a draft of what will be your website or app to check its functionality, performance, and experience of using it. You can use it to check for bugs, work in teams co-editing, and share with the people you select to show them the progress or receive their feedback.
Lightroom
Lightroom is the “Cloud Only” (not to be confused with the Lightroom Classic) version of the popular photo editing and photo-organizing application. In this program, you can edit your photos, organize them, share them, and access them from different devices and from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Acrobat Pro
Acrobat is a tool for creating and managing PDF files: you can quickly and easily open, print, organize, and share these types of documents. Thanks to Creative Cloud, you can share and receive reviews of the same PDF file. This format can then be opened from any device or platform.
Animate
Adobe Animate CC, formerly known as Adobe Flash or Macromedia Flash, is the best-known and most widely used professional digital animation program. You can create all kinds of vector animations, applications, games, and more. It is currently used by large companies for certain film and TV series animations.
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is an application for designing, creating, and editing web pages and applications. It is the number one software for building websites. Dreamweaver accepts most of today’s programming languages, such as HTML, PHP, CSS, and Javascript.
Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro is the number one professional video editing software on the market. This program is well known for its great performance, the number of advanced features available, and its versatility when editing. It could be called the “Photoshop of video”.
Premiere Rush
Rush is a “fast and easy” version of Premiere Pro. This application allows you to edit videos in a very short time and without the need to have a lot of experience or spend hours learning the program. It is mainly aimed at YouTubers, influencers, and amateurs since it also offers export options for all social networks.
After Effects
After Effects is an application dedicated to video editing, but mainly to the postproduction and creation of special effects and 2D/3D animations. It is one of Adobe’s most popular programs and, as part of the Creative Cloud, it easily integrates with other programs in the Suite. You can edit a video in Premiere and export it to After Effects to create special effects.
Adobe Creative Cloud Review | Dimension
Dimension is a program that allows you to make compositions of 3D elements in 2D environments, that is, you can add 3D objects to a photograph respecting the perspective, shadows, and depth. It is an excellent tool for creating product and packaging designs, simplifying the use of 3D.
Audition
Adobe Audition is a practical and versatile digital audio editing program. It allows non-destructive mixing and editing of multitrack audio and its destructive counterpart, allowing you to choose according to your needs. You can record and mix audio directly from the application.
InCopy
Adobe InCopy is a professional-level word processor in which you can write, edit, and proofread any type of document. It was created to integrate with Adobe InDesign in the creation of material for newspapers and magazines, but can be used as a standalone application. It includes a dictionary, text editing options, a search and replace tool, and many more features.
Lightroom Classic
Lightroom Classic is Adobe’s renowned photo editor and organizer. Previously known simply as Lightroom, this is the desktop version of the Creative Cloud 2020. You can organize and sort your photos, edit RAWs and JPGs nondestructively, and export your results when you’re done. You can export photos to Photoshop for advanced editing and then return to Lightroom to export to your hard drive.
Adobe Creative Cloud Review | Media Encoder
Adobe Media Encoder is a tool that works as an encoding software for different Adobe video editors (Premiere Pro, After Effects, etc.) and as a standalone app that allows you to convert videos between many formats. You can send groups of videos from Premiere Pro to the Media Encoder export queue and continue editing in Premiere as if nothing had happened.
Character Animator
Adobe Character Animator does exactly what its name says, it is an application to animate 2D characters using a webcam and tracking technology. Using your face and body, you can animate puppets created in Illustrator or Photoshop and bring them to life with this program. It is ideal for all those who want to start in 2D animation or who want to have a quick way to make animations.
Prelude
Adobe Prelude is a metadata ingest and logging tool that integrates with Premiere Pro. It allows you to register and tag video files before opening them with Premiere, for better organization and search in projects that require the use of a lot of multimedia.
Fuse
Adobe Fuse is a 3D character creator and editing program. You can create all kinds of characters and use them in one of the other applications in the Creative Cloud, such as Photoshop, or animate them using Character Animator. In the character creator, you can indicate all the body characteristics, such as sex, height, muscle mass, etc.
Bridge
Bridge is an application that works with any Creative Cloud program, but mainly with Photoshop. It allows you to organize and classify the photos and images that you are going to edit, as well as tag them and manage them in large quantities.
Adobe Creative Cloud Pricing
In the past, you could get Adobe Apps by paying a lifetime license system, so you were able to own the full Creative Suite version you bought and use it forever. That changed with the arrival of the Creative Cloud, as now the payment system is exclusively by monthly subscription.
This has its advantages and disadvantages, but one thing that cannot be denied is that it made applications like Photoshop or Premiere Pro available to individuals and amateurs, thanks to its low monthly cost.
Current plans cost:
- $9.99 for the Photography plan, which includes Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Photoshop.
- $20.99 for a single application (You can choose one from the list available).
- $52.99 for everything Creative Cloud offers (20+ programs, tools, and services). This is Adobe’s best-selling plan because it includes all the available applications.
Adobe Creative Cloud Review | Conclusion
Although the Adobe subscription system has caused some controversy in the market, the ability to have large updates at no additional cost and the number of services and tools that Adobe offers make its price worthwhile.
With several of its programs in the number one position in the market, Creative Cloud is a quite tempting and efficient package, offering professional-level quality and performance at your fingertips.
If you have any questions, you can download their free trial and try out for yourself everything this suite of programs has to offer and confirm everything I’ve told you in this Adobe Creative Cloud Review.
