On day 1 in Cannes, France we focused on marketers and asked if everyday consumers trust them. Day 2 was all about the creatives. We took the camera crew around the festival and asked people – with a focus on the Young Lions – what gets their creative juices flowing? Where do the ideas come from? Do the tools they use to make their creations actually help the ideation process? See what they had to say.

You can see the creative fingerprints of other creatives in this dynamic infographic. Soon you’ll be able to add your own take on the questions, and the infographic will update in real time (!) — keep an eye on this space for more details.

Holy cloud computing Batman.  Adobe has released a big, huge, enormous update to Creative Cloud this early summer evening (it’s summer here in California, Southern hemisphere folks).  We have 15, count ‘em, new desktop applications – now branded CC to signify their future as connected, socially-integrated apps.  That’s Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver and many, many (ok, twelve) more.

And no, that doesn’t mean you have to be connected to the Interwebs to use them or that Photoshop is now “in the browser”, as I overheard some tech guru tell someone the other day. Adobe evangelist, the great Terry White, busted those myths a wee while back, here.  The CC apps are just part of what we have to offer, with new community and publishing services integrated into the Creative Cloud experience.

Check out what the creative cloud team is saying, here.

Thanks again for using Creative Cloud. If you have any questions or comments, please post them in our forums, where we are continuing the conversation.

Adobe announced the availability of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 for Mac OS and Windows today, offering intelligent photo editing features, solutions for remote workflows, and extended sharing and publishing capabilities.  As the digital photography landscape has advanced and evolved, Lightroom has kept pace, offering powerful new features and gaining recognition as the essential photography application for busy professionals and creative amateurs to get the most out of their digital images.

Among the powerful new photo editing tools included in Lightroom 5 are:

• Advanced Healing Brush – helps fix imperfections with the precision and flexibility of a fine brush
• Upright Tool – analyzes and automatically straightens objects such as buildings
• Radial Gradient –  subjects stand out by applying off-center and multiple vignettes in a single image

Smart Previews allow photographers to make edits to their images offline with edits.  Changes made to Smart Previews are automatically applied to the original images when they are reconnected.  Additionally, new video slideshows can combine still images, video clips and music in a creative HD slideshow that can be viewed on almost any device, while updates to the Book module allow users to create, personalize and print beautiful photo books from a variety of tailored and easy-to-use or customer-specific templates.

Lightroom 5 was initially released as a free, public beta in April 2013. Since beta testing, a Behance Publish Service and more than 400 bug fixes have been incorporated into the final release. More detailed information about the updates in Lightroom 5, in addition to pricing and availability, can be found in the full press release here.

Customers can also connect with the Lightroom team directly on Facebook, via Twitter, or on the Adobe Lightroom blog. For Lightroom how-to videos, visit our YouTube channel.

I admit it. I was the archetypal awkward kid sitting off to the side, observing more than engaging. I went through numerous crisis of confidence about my conflicting interests in art and design and the more “legitimate” pursuits like sports and AP classes. But through a wonderful convergence of good fortune and good timing I emerged from the awkward years mostly intact and embarked on a career as a designer at just about the time that the world started to wake up to the value of design. I am a proud, albeit still awkward card carrying member of the Creative Class. It turns out that there are quite a few of us here at Adobe, including about 100 in the Experience Design (XD) team I lead. There are also a few million of them that we feel connected to because they (all of you) are the people who make the applications that we help design sing and dance.

It is in this capacity, as the creatives that help make the tools for the creatives, that we set out to make the Adobe Creative Class video:

We started with only the seeds of an idea. We wanted to create an Anthem to creatives, something that would both recognize the travails and celebrate the accomplishments of our peers, creative people. Over the course of the few weeks that we had to conceptualize and execute the project, there were all the regular fears, challenges and unreasonable optimism that accompany any creative effort. We started the project by retaining the creative people at Melcher Media, and together conceptualized a project that was ambitious but attainable, and they set about to lead the effort to produce a script that still gives me the chills every time I read it:

 The Creative Class

We are the creative class. We are alone in our rooms with one dream among us. We tell stories about boys and girls who learn to fly and we make those stories come as true as our minds can will them. Our teachers are comic books and cartoons; every bedroom a Bat Cave, every den the mutant lair. Our gallery is hung with magnets on the fridge.

We stand on your corner and wonder, What if we could play for a living? What if we could use chalk to make this sidewalk more interesting? What if there are others out here watching the trees turn into polka dots? We fill wastebaskets with weak ideas. Our cash goes to canvas and acrylic colors, and we wonder, How much bologna can we eat before it’s bad for us? Can we bottle the smell of  fear and sell it?

We paint a mural of the ocean and in the wall we find the shell around a tiny pearl. We share it between us. It warms our hands. Let’s use it to guide us in twos and threes. Let’s make something there in the dark, so we’re not afraid of the dark ever again. We are the photo negative and we are what develops. There are forty of us making this work after hours because we’ve figured out a way to do it better. Don’t say that it’s impossible and that there’s no budget for glitter. Give us a wheel to reinvent. Let’s make a lighter, cleaner water jug for disaster relief. Let’s turn sustainable design into design that sustains us all.

We are millions of us armed with drop cloths and wood glue and a vision. We will silk screen a banner that flies colors you’ve never heard of. Let’s raise high the beams and set the roof on fire. Let’s send a ripple from here to New Delhi. We can start a rally with a website, a revolution with a jpeg, and we are more than the sum of our parts. We get presidents elected. We are an army. We are alone in our rooms. There is a story in all of us and we are going to make it.

The team at Melcher Media (http://melcher.com) had a good, rational plan for getting the project animated, but then I made the “mistake” of sharing the project with one of our Principal Designers, Erk Natzke. He reached out to Kyle Cooper and his team at Prologue (http://prologue.com), who emailed back this photo of his son Kaden working on his own bedroom Bat Cave, a sure indication that he shared an affinity for the project:

Kyle is probably well known to most of you, but for the record, he’s the motion designer that brought art back to movie credits when he created the mind blowing title sequences for Seven. And he said yes to our little project! So there we were, with a world class team, a damn good script, and a few weeks to create if we wanted to debut at MAX.

Not to be outdone, Erik contributed a few pictures of his young prodigy learning to fly (along with a number of his other non human creations.)

Over time it seemed like just about every line in the script sparked a connection to our lives as creatives. And we weren’t alone. As the team reached out to more and more creatives, to build the library of imagery that makes up the final product, there were personal stories and connections, little bits of nostalgia that made the project all that more meaningful to the participants. The project became an adventure in remembering how we became creatives and a celebration of all that has come to mean.

We are hoping this is just a start. We had a slightly bigger idea of building an application to create a bigger story that we would build with all of you, some sort of collective creative narrative. We would love to figure out how to create an ongoing dialogue about what it means to be part of the Creative Class. We would love to be able to see what all of you would contribute to that dialogue.

I think I can speak for the entire cast of characters that contributed to the project, that it became a remarkably personal and, as a result, remarkably satisfying project. And to give credit where credit is due, view the list of that cast on the next page.

Our Kuler web app has been a hit with creatives everywhere for a few years now, allowing designers (and the color-curious like myself) to create and explore color themes. We sneaked the new version of Kuler at Adobe MAX back in early May — and today it’s available.  A new revamped web experience for Kuler is now online at: http://kuler.adobe.com

It’s really a gorgeous piece of web design that has been rebuilt and optimized for the latest versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

But the real exciting news is that Kuler has gone mobile with the delivery of a new free iPhone app available, here. Kuler allows you to easily extract a theme from what the iPhone camera is seeing, without even taking a photo. It’s as simple as opening the app, pointing the camera at something and its colors are quickly captured for later use.

Kuler also has a Sync Color feature for use with Illustrator CC.  Sync Colors lets you use Kuler and Illustrator to quickly incorporate colors you see around you into your vector artwork. Sync your favorite themes with the Kuler website, and they’ll be accessible immediately inside Illustrator CC – which will be available as part of our major update to Creative Cloud, released on June 17.

The Kuler team is always interested in hearing your views, so if you’d like to join the conversation head over to the Kuler forum.

The good folks over on the Creative Cloud Team blog, have given an update on what they are hearing from the creative community, since we announced a major update to Creative Cloud at Adobe MAX on May 6th.  See what they have to say, here.

Thanks again for using Creative Cloud. If you have any questions or comments, please post them in our forums, where we are continuing the conversation.

Adobe today announced that the Ideacodes team is joining Adobe.  Ideacodes is a leading creative consultancy, based in San Francisco, that specializes in the design and user experience of smart applications, digital products and networked communities.

“For the last nine years we’ve worked to re-envision the design of digital products and create the ultimate user experience for their customers,” said Emily Chang and Max Kiesler, co-founders of Ideacodes. “We’re thrilled to join Adobe at a time when Creative Cloud is beginning to take form, the potential to harness the power of connected networks is being realized, and the influence of good design on experience is being appreciated and expected from people worldwide.”

The co-founders of Ideacodes are joining Adobe as Creative Directors of Creative Cloud, bringing with them a wealth of knowledge and experience in design and creative strategy.

“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.”

Last week we also announced that Thumb Labs, a small team of mobile developers that have worked with Behance over the years, were joining the Adobe team to bring great mobile experiences to Creative Cloud members.

We look forward to working with Emily and Max from Ideacodes!

Are you putting off your most important creative work day after day, as you fend off a constant stream of emails, interruptions, and urgent requests? Is your adrenaline and anxiety regularly running high, while your sense of meaningful accomplishment is running low?

It’s time for a reality check about the way we’re working. Our current model is frantic, stressful, and just plain unproductive when it comes to the things that matter most. Beyond that, it just doesn’t serve our creativity.

To help us all recalibrate our workflow for sanity, sustainability, and meaningful productivity, Behance’s 99U decided to create a smart, succinct book about how to manage your daily workflow that’s specifically tailored to creative minds.

We’re thrilled to introduce Manage Your Day-to-Day, the first book in a new 99U series which assembles insights around four key skill sets that we believe are essential to success: building a rock-solid daily routine, taming your tools (before they tame you), finding focus in a distracted world, and sharpening your creative mind.

Dedicating a chapter to each of these focus areas, 99U invited 20 incredible creative minds to share their expertise, including:

Seth Godin
Stefan Sagmeister
Tony Schwartz
Gretchen Rubin
Dan Ariely
Steven Pressfield
Scott Belsky
James Victore
& many more

The result is a tightly-edited collection of best practices that will help you shift your mindset, recalibrate your workflow, and push more incredible ideas to completion. It’s not just a book, it’s a wake-up call for your creativity.

You can order the book exclusively on Amazon. To learn more, check out the book trailer below:

Day 1 of Adobe MAX wrapped up yesterday with a lot of buzz and news. We kicked things off in the morning with our keynote session, “A Creative Evolution.” We announced a slew of news as well, including all-new updates to our Creative Cloud apps – Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Edge Tools & Services, and more! If you missed the keynote, watch the playback available here or catch the community-curated version captured in Storify by MAX attendee, @GayaneAdourian.

Even more exciting, we shared an early look at a number of new explorations:

• Project Mighty – A Creative Cloud pen
• Project Napolean – Complementary to Mighty, Napolean is a digital ruler designed to bring back some of the feeling of drawing with analog tools like the t-square and triangle
• Project Context – Reimagines the editorial room for publishers

For more on MAX, join the #AdobeMAX conversation.

Adobe MAX, The Creativity Conference, opened today in Los Angeles and we announced some big news: a major update to Adobe Creative Cloud, including fully integrated cross-device collaboration, community and publishing capabilities; and the next generation of Adobe’s pro creative desktop applications.

Here are some of the details:

Adobe Unveils Major Update to Creative Cloud

A milestone update to Adobe Creative Cloud simplifies the entire creative process with new versions of desktop tools; services that take publishing content to the next level; and capabilities that make it easier than ever to collaborate and share work on a worldwide basis. Behance, the world’s leading online creative community with over 1.4 million creatives in the network, is now central to the Creative Cloud experience.

Adobe’s desktop tools, previously known as Creative Suite (CS) are now branded CC to reflect that they are an integral part of Creative Cloud and have been reinvented to support a more intuitive, connected way of creating.  All of Adobe’s fan-favorite desktop apps have been updated: InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, Muse CC and more.  Indeed our most iconic application, a powerful new version of Photoshop – Adobe Photoshop CC – will anchor this update to Creative Cloud.  In all, Creative Cloud will now consist of more than 30 tools and services that enable professional grade content creation and delivery across print, web, mobile apps, video and photography.

This major update is expected to be available, around the globe, in June.

Adobe Accelerates Shift to the Cloud

Moving forward, the company also announced that it will focus creative software development efforts on Creative Cloud.  While Adobe Creative Suite 6 products will continue to be supported and available for purchase, there are no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products. By focusing development on Creative Cloud, Adobe can accelerate the rate of innovation that it can deliver to creatives worldwide.

We thought long and hard before doing this, and we understand that this transition may be hard for some people.  As our teams work to deliver a constant stream of innovation for Creative Cloud members, we are actively engaging with customers to answer their questions — in forums like Creative Cloud community. And attractive pricing plans and promotions for individuals, teams and enterprise customers are being offered to make the transition to Creative Cloud really easy.  More information can be found at on our Creative Cloud plans page.

More detailed information about today’s major Creative Cloud update can be found in the full press release here.

And if you have specific questions, chances are you’ll find an answer in our comprehensive FAQ.