Category: DigitalAssetManagementPro

DigitalAssetManagementPro

Adobe Acquires Ideacodes Team For Creative Cloud

Adobe announced on Tuesday that it has acquired the team behind Ideaclouds, for use in the Creative Cloud department. Ideacodes is a creative consultancy, which Adobe says will help it “continue to create an excellent Creative Cloud experience.”

The San Francisco-based company specializes in design and user experience of smart apps, digital products and networked communities.

“Our job at Adobe is to deliver an incredible experience every time a customer accesses Creative Cloud,” said Jeff Veen, vice president, product management, Adobe Creative Cloud. “The Ideacodes team will help us realize our goal of making Creative Cloud indispensable for creatives worldwide.”

Ideacodes co-founders Emily Chang and Max Kiesler write on the Ideacodes homepage, “We started Ideacodes nine years ago with the shared desire to design unique and engaging experiences for the digital age, and to create a design company that was agile, forward-focused and collaborative. It’s been a pleasure and honor to have worked with so many visionary, talented individuals at startups, tech companies, businesses, design organizations and universities. Together, we’ve created delightful and useful digital experiences for people worldwide and promoted the power and positive effects of the connected age.”

“But this is only the beginning,” they add. “We’re as passionate as ever to create the ultimate user experience, and this time it’s for the creative community: one that we’ve been a part of for sixteen years. We’re excited to announce that we’ll be joining Adobe as Creative Directors of Creative Cloud. It couldn’t be happening at a better time. Creative Cloud is an ecosystem for creatives worldwide, a subscription-based platform that comes complete with advanced versions of much-loved software, instant access to a plethora of tools and services, file syncing and sharing and the benefits of community through Behance. We look forward to helping lead and shape the creative vision for what’s next and to evolving the design experience of Creative Cloud.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

May 28, 2013
Adobe Ditches Creative Suite In Favor Of Creative Cloud

For years, Adobe has sold its professional design software under the Creative Suite banner. There were hints that was going to change when Adobe stopped selling CS6 at retail, but the company has moved to kill Creative Suite faster than anybody expected.

Adobe announced at its annual MAX conference that it will no longer be releasing new versions of its software under the Creative Suite banner. Instead, all future updates and features will be delivered via Creative Cloud. In other words, those who buy Creative Suite 6 will only get just that while all new features to Photoshop and the like will only be available via Creative Cloud.

The move to Creative Cloud, which is a subscription service, has upset some members of the Adobe user community. The complaints were excellently captured in a new video released by our favorite Taiwanese animators at NMA:

Adobe says that it’s moving to a subscription-only model because it will allow them to deliver updates to users at a faster rate:

“We launched Creative Cloud a year ago and it has been a runaway success,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media, Adobe. “By focusing our energy — and our talented engineers — on Creative Cloud, we’re able to put innovation in our members’ hands at a much faster pace.”

To convince current CS6 users to move to Creative Cloud, Adobe is offering discounts on the subscription service for a limited time. You can check out all the different Creative Cloud plans here.

May 7, 2013
Adobe Acquires Behance For Creative Cloud

Adobe announced today that it has acquired social media platform Behance, which will become part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud.

Adobe SVP and GM David Wadhwani says, “When we launched Creative Cloud earlier this year, we committed that we would give members new value on an ongoing basis. Last week, we launched new training features, file synchronization and sharing capabilities, digital publishing services and significant updates to a number of our tools, including Photoshop. Behance will play a key role in Adobe’s efforts to serve the creative world in the years to come and will accelerate our efforts to enable a more open and collaborative creative community.”

Behance co-founder and CEO Scott Belsky adds, “We set out to connect the creative world and maximize the exposure that creatives receive for their work. As creatives rely more on the social Web for collaboration and opportunity, creative people and teams will benefit from Behance’s community features integrated into the creative process. We’re thrilled to join Adobe and empower creative careers on a global scale.”

The Benhance team goes on on its own blog, saying:

Our mission continues: we want to empower creative people and teams to make ideas happen. We believe that a free and open platform to showcase work – and get discovered – will serve creative careers in extraordinary ways. Not only will we leverage Adobe’s resources to further build Behance, but we have been tasked with the responsibility to influence and improve Adobe’s services for the creative community – making them more collaborative and in sync with the future of creative workflow.

In practical terms, our team will continue to implement our (very ambitious) roadmap for Behance and integrate Behance features into Adobe’s services. We are eager to translate the site into multiple languages and leverage the latest technology to display creative work. 99U, our annual conference, and all of our efforts to educate and organize the creative community will continue to grow. And finally, we will explore new opportunities to move the creative industry forward, through better discovery applications, more transparency in the creative process, and providing access to the data behind the creative world at work.

According to Adobe, portfolios on Behance-powered sites have received over 90 million views. There are over 3 million projects hosted on the platform.

December 20, 2012
Adobe Adds Game Developer Tools To Creative Cloud

Back in February, Adobe published a white paper that outlined the future of Flash Player. The company said that it would be refocusing its efforts on gaming and Web video after discontinuing work on the mobile version for Android. Almost 10 months later, Adobe has made good on that promise by introducing game development tools into Creative Cloud.

Creative Cloud, the subscription-based collection of premium Adobe products, has been around for a while now. It includes the likes of Photoshop and more developer friendly software like Edge, but now it includes game developer software like Adobe Scout.

What’s Adobe Scout? The company says it’s an “advanced next-generation profiling tool that uncovers granular information in ActionScript-based mobile and browser content to unlock significant performance optimization opportunities. For more information, check out Adobe’s video breakdown:

Adobe will be including the first release of Scout in the free Creative Cloud membership as a special promotion. The free membership also includes the Adobe Gaming SDK, Adobe Flash C++ Compiler, and trial versions of Flash Professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.7 Premium.

As for paid membership, you’ll get the full versions of Flash Professional and Flash Builder plus future versions of Scout. There’s also the little perk of getting access to all of CS6 and Edge Tools as well. Photoshop would definitely be useful in game design, especially those who are creating textures or vibrant 2D games.

It should also be noted that Flash now supports Unreal Engine 3 and Unity 4. That’s as good of a reason as any to start bringing your games to desktop players around the world.

December 7, 2012
Adobe Makes Web Site Creation Even Easier

Adobe made a big splash in May by releasing their highly anticipated Creative Suite 6. They also released Creative Cloud, their first foray into cloud-based storage and software. One bit of software exclusive to Creative Cloud customers is Muse, a program that allows graphic designers to build Web sites without knowing any code. It was already easy enough to use, but Adobe is making it even easier.

Adobe announced on Monday that Muse has received a substantial upgrade. The update makes it easier to create all the content of a Web site directly inside Muse instead of having to import HTML code from third-party providers. It also includes new language and download support.

The major change in the update is support for built-in contact forms. Users can “easily add, configure and style contact forms” in their Web site designs. Users had to previously grab HTML code from third-party form providers. This meant that contact forms were never truly personalized, but now designers can make contact forms truly their own.

Here’s a video on how to create contact forms in Adobe Muse:

Another welcome addition is the ability to link to downloadable files. Adobe says that any type of file is valid, but only mentions .pdf, .zip, .dmg and .exe. It remains to be seen if all file types are welcome. I know many people prefer to use .rar instead of .zip for compression so it would be welcome if Muse included support for it. As an aside, all of these downloadable files will be uploaded with your Muse-created site in the new “assets” folder.

There’s a slight bonus for Creative Cloud subscribers versus those who pay for just Muse. Adobe has added support for HTML5 animations made in Adobe Edge to Muse. It’s just another way for Adobe to push HTML5, but it’s still a nice addition for those who prefer it over Flash.

As for new languages, Adobe has added localizations for Japanese and Italian. The Japanese localization has received special attention with support for Japanese IME and Web safe fonts. With the addition of these two languages, Adobe Muse is now available in eight languages.

To se all the changes that were added to Muse, check out the release notes. There are a lot of minor tweaks that Adobe made to the software that you may be interested in.

August 21, 2012
RR Donnelly Buys Journalism Online

Printing company RR Donnelley said today it has acquired Journalism Online, a company aimed at helping news papers monetize their web content.

Financial terms of the deal were not released.

Three veteran media executives are behind Journalism Online including Steven Brill, founder of Court TV, Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Leo Hindery, a former chief executive of AT&T Broadband.

Journalism Online created a payment platform called “Press+” that allows newspapers and magazines to charge readers for access to online content via a password-protected website. Press+ allows publishers to offer users a mix of options for subscribing to premium content, including metered and mobile/tablet access, improved site functionality, and out-of-market access.

“Our publishing customers continue to develop multi-channel advertising and editorial strategies and Press+ provides a valuable tool for monetizing content,” said Thomas J. Quinlan III, RR Donnelley’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

“We provide solutions across the entire breadth of the publishing supply chain, from content creation and digital asset management through subscription solicitations, processing and renewals. Press+ enhances our offering and opens new avenues for publishers to generate incremental subscription and advertising revenue.”

March 24, 2011