Creative Cloud is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year! And we are not going to let this milestone go unnoticed. Adobe CC has become an essential tool for every creative, marketer, and anyone working professionally with graphics, animations, photos, videos, publications – you name it. In just 10 years, Adobe CC has transformed into an indispensable creative toolbox.
Peter Maas has been an instructor at Catena Company for 10 years. An expert in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and web, Peter has witnessed the evolution of Creative Cloud and is excited to share his top highlights from the past decade.
Content Aware Fill
Not long ago, Photoshop introduced Content-Aware Fill with a dialogue box. Before that, the feature existed, but there was no control over the source of the adjustments. Now you can control the source, which is a huge advantage for handling more complex fills.
And it gets even better! Today, multiple edits can be made in succession, with each edit placed on a separate image layer. This means you can still remove or adjust them later if needed.
Content Aware Fill has become incredibly user-friendly and truly adds value to the Photoshop toolbox.
Customizable Toolbar
How annoying is it when the Dodge and Burn tools are hidden behind each other in Photoshop? Or when the healing and spot healing brushes share the same spot? This can be especially frustrating if you work with a Wacom pen, as holding the pen longer on a selected tool to access the hidden one is far from convenient.
Now, you can customise the toolbar. Any tool you want to access instantly can be easily detached from its group, making it immediately available when you need it. This feature is far easier to use in Photoshop compared to Adobe Illustrator. In Illustrator, it’s possible to customise the toolbar too, but it’s not as well-executed – it requires some fiddling. If only the Illustrator team would take a good look at how the Photoshop team managed it!
Object selection tool
This one is a game-changer! At first, you think you’re working super-fast with the Quick Selection Tool. Then Adobe introduces the Object selection tool, and everything changes. Simply drag the cursor around the object for a moment and… what?! It’s that easy.
To top it off, Adobe has improved this tool three more times since its release. Now, as a teacher, I can introduce something incredibly useful in the basic course, which was previously reserved for the Photoshop Advanced class. That’s what I call progress!
Scalable interface
I now spend 90% of my time teaching, and I like to explain things clearly and demonstrate them effectively. That’s why it’s fantastic that Adobe Illustrator and InDesign now allow us to enlarge the display of anchor points. With the prevalence of Retina screens these days, those anchor points often look way too small, making it easy to select the wrong one.
Finally, InDesign has a scalable interface, so I can present it properly to a group at 1920×1080 resolution. A larger view benefits both me and my students. Now, if only Photoshop could catch up…
Shading and Borders on text
This one is simple to explain and easy to grasp: a text box with a background colour in InDesign. The background colour adjusts dynamically with the text, and it’s highly customisable, offering a great deal of flexibility. That said, I wish it offered even more options, like additional rounding or endings behind the text. I’d love to go beyond just rounded or angled corners to experiment with other shapes and variations.
Still, it’s a feature I adore! It quickly makes headings stand out and even lets you create tables with rounded corners in no time.
New gradient tool in Illustrator
Creating backgrounds with colour transitions used to be a bit of a hassle. But with the new gradient tool, the process has become so much easier. Simply add an extra pin, choose the colour and its strength, and you’re done. It doesn’t always have to be rocket science. Just great!
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