2014 & 2015 Updates from Adobe

Hi everyone, below is a graphic I made in November 2014, re-posted now to make sure that it gets tracked as a post! 

This year Adobe has continued to steadily expand the Creative Cloud with new product offerings. If you own an iPad, check out this year's new Abode Voice and Adobe Slate apps that will help bring your story to life with next-level formatting and animation templates. Adobe are refining the apps for a later Android or wider release, but for now they have released Voice and Slate exclusively to iOS so they can learn how users are interacting with the new tools. 

This is not an unusual R&D strategy for Adobe; for example, the character animation tool "Project Animal" that was announced in October 2014 exclusively for the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 has been incorporated into the most recent update for After Effects CC (13.5). Renamed as the Adobe Character Animator, the tool is now in development stage "Preview 2" - so it is available and the development team are actively seeking user feedback via a new community forum. The Character Animator was created with the intent of simplifying the animation process when starting with a static Photoshop or Illustrator file (e.g. the tool uses face-tracking technology to automatically map the character's speech and eye movement to action captured with a camera and microphone). It seems like a fantastic tool for graphic designers who are just beginning to explore animation techniques. 

Android users aren't left out though, I recommend trying the free Adobe Shape app to quickly capture and vectorize a nearby object/sketch with the camera on your mobile device. 

Until next time... 
- Claire