Adobe Creative Cloud All-in-One For Dummies. Christopher Smith

Introduction

      Adobe software has always been highly respected by creative professionals. Adobe creates tools that allow you to produce designs for all things, from printed brochures and posters, to websites, applications, and advanced video productions. The Adobe Creative Cloud is the company’s latest release of sophisticated and professional-level software that bundles many separate programs as a suite. Each program in the Creative Cloud works individually, or you can integrate the programs by using Adobe Bridge, an independent program that helps you control file management with thumbnails, metadata, and other organizational tools.

      With Adobe Creative Cloud, a monthly membership offers you the entire collection of Adobe tools and more. Love print? Interested in websites and iPad apps? Ready to edit video? You can do it all. Plus, Creative Cloud members automatically get access to new products and exclusive updates as soon as they’re released. And, with cloud storage and the ability to sync to any device, your files are always right where you need them. Creative Cloud is available for individuals or teams.

      The first is Creative Services, which are hosted services that you can use in your production work, in the delivery of your content. This includes a font service like Typekit, which enables the use and delivery of a broad foundry of cloud fonts across all of your work. A second area is Digital Publishing, which enables publishing rich media to tablets via the cloud. And the third category is Business Catalyst, which supports designing and operating websites for small businesses, with prebuilt services for things like handling e-commerce, doing customer relationship management, and integrating with social networks.

      The second pillar is Creative Community, which is the community of creative people (like you!) around the world and which enables you to connect more easily with other creative people — it’s a place to share, to communicate, and to inspire each other with your work. The community is a critical part of our whole ecosystem, and it’s a critical part of the cloud. At the center of this is the web presence of the Creative Cloud, which is creative.adobe.com. And one of the great things there is it will understand all the formats you’re using in your creative work — PSD files, InDesign files, and Illustrator files. Where other cloud services might show you an icon describing the file type, this shows you the actual content, and you can interact with it in a context-sensitive way. It’s a much deeper understanding of creative content.

And lastly, the third pillar is Creative Applications — and these are enabling you to create not only on personal computers, but also wherever you are with mobile devices, all connected through the Creative Cloud. This includes a whole new collection of Adobe touch apps to run on tablets and other mobile devices. In addition, membership also includes access to all Adobe creative desktop products you know and love, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Premiere and InDesign, Adobe XD, and more. You can download and install any of these applications you choose as part of your membership, and these are all connected to Creative Cloud via desktop sync. They also interact with the touch apps, and you can move files between desktop and touch as you’re working.

Why Is It Important?

      You can use the Adobe Creative Cloud programs to create a wide range of products, from illustrations, page layouts, websites, photographic compositions, video, and 3D images. Integrating the CC programs extends the possibilities for you as a designer. Don’t worry about the programs being too difficult to figure out — just come up with your ideas and start creating!

About This Book

      Adobe Creative Cloud All-in-One For Dummies is written in a thorough and fun way to show you the basic steps of how to use each program included in the Creative Cloud package. You find out how to use each program individually and how to work with the programs together, extending your projects even further. You find out just how easy it is to use the programs by following simple steps so that you can discover the power of the Adobe software. You’ll be up and running in no time!

      Here are some things you can do with this book: