Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is an essential part of my life. I use Photoshop almost every day and while it wasn't practical just a few short years ago it's now possible to use the latest version for ten dollars per month which is fantastic. I love Photoshop so much it's easily my favorite software ever and that's saying something coming from a pretty big nerd lol. I'm interested in the apps available in their complete Creative Cloud suite so thought to leave a review of what I've found out. You can also upgrade from their solo Photoshop app, to include Illustrator, Indesign, Premiere Pro and others as your choice for twenty dollars per month which is still excellent value in my opinion. Photoshop of course is for photography but it's also for digital drawing and painting and this what I've been using it to do. I used to draw a lot but it's been quite a few years. I bought some artists paper, pens and pencils earlier this year as I've been finding myself drawn to art once again, so to speak. And then I had a graphic tablet passed on to me a couple of months ago. I had used one in the past but it was the smallest of the Wacom versions and didn't inspire at the time, though do include a copy of Photoshop Elements with my purchase so was my introduction to Photoshop at the time which was to great to dip my toes. I've used Photoshop since to create logos, banner ads, ecovers, slideshow slides, tee shirt designs and more. But when the graphic table arrived which is about the size of my laptop screen so it feels much more intuitive than my original Wacom arrived and I tried it out with the latest version Photoshop CC it was totally awesome, and I've basically done nothing else with my free time in the last six weeks. And I look forward to getting back painting in Photoshop later today! There's no mess in Photoshop but it feels ultra realistic when you paint. The stylus like pen which comes with your graphic tablet is pressure sensitive so when you press down light it draws or paints lighter and when you press harder it draws or paints heavier which is amazing. You can layer your creative process so you can go back and change things later. There are a lot of ways to work with your drawing so you can paint on top of it without destroying the original data so it's extremely versatile in this way. Illustrator is for graphic design. Indesign is for your books, posters, brochures, flyers, magazine and newspaper designs. Premier Pro is their comprehensive video editor which is a professional grade software. Adobe Muse helps you create website without having to know how to program code which is great. Adobe Acrobat Pro is for editing PDF files in surprising number of ways, I've tried it recently and was blown away at the deceptive amount of features it has tucked away in your account. Dreamweaver is for HTML and CSS mostly and has been around for a very long time. I checked it out a long time ago when I built my first website using HTML and CSS but didn't use it for this as I found it to be too complex at the time. I'm curious how much it's been developed and how quickly my experience would have myself able to adapt to this latest version. Animate CC is their newest version of Flash to be released in the near future and I'm very interested in learning more about how it differs from Adobe After Effects which is their motion graphics design and animation suite with video compositing. Adobe Audition is there audio recording and editing software. And Adobe InCopy is there full featured text editor. So these are all the apps you can get for $20 per month and I hope someone else finds it helpful to have them all listed as their purposes in one place.

I wish that Photoshop had a few keyboard shortcuts that I thought would be possible. Perhaps they are and I have yet to learn how to do advanced keyboard shortcuts. I also wish that other brushes and tools would make their titles evident quicker so that they highlight and you know the title of a particular brush quicker, for example.

Overall, I haven't been this passionate about any software in a very long time. Photoshop facilities creativity in ways I don't even know are possible yet. I'm just now starting to consider myself as an intermediate Photoshop user and I love learning how to accomplish new things using it because it's not all tricks and shortcuts. The tools make for an ultra realistic drawing and painting experience which stretches and flexes your creativity in incredibly intuitive ways. I can't wait to upgrade graphic tablets and be able to use the actual screen of the tablet to directly draw on using Photoshop. A Wacom Cintiq would be a dream come true but I've discovered the Tooya tablets work well as this was the brand which was passed to me and I've been using for a few hours each day. To be able to be this passionate about art digitally means a lot me and Adobe Creative Cloud makes this possible. I can't recommend it highly enough!