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.

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.

— Team ‘Femme Fatale’ shown in photo left to right: Liza Gutierrez, Jennifer Davidson, Samantha Hannis, Marcella Martinez, Skylar Mowery (Rachel Ramsey not pictured.) Photo by GIT major, Tessa Menken

Under guidance from Graphic Information Technology (GIT) professor Arnaud Ehgner, a team of female students from Arizona State University (ASU) has been working tirelessly on a school project to develop a one-level game on par with those created by industry professionals.

Maia, a 2D side-scroll action game for portable devices, is a magical jungle adventure that leads the player through a series of mysterious temples and ruins where the priestess—Maia—tries to head off an attack and keep peace in the village of Kuma.

The game is developed using 3D models for a 2D game. While the scenery is 2D, the characters are created first in 3D, and then transplanted into a 2D world. The team chose to develop the game using Adobe solutions including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Flash Professional because of the compatibility across platforms. Illustrator is used for the game’s concept art; Photoshop to finalize artwork with shading, touch-ups, and closing up texture seams; and Flash Professional for creating an engaging game with consistency across platforms.

“Adobe Photoshop also helps us play with the different perspectives by easily letting us translate and rotate the 3D models onto a 2D plane,” said team leader Rachel Ramsey.

The game targets female players with a strong leading female character. “I am so excited to be a part of Maia, as it has been one of my childhood dreams to create a video game with a strong female protagonist,” notes team member Jennifer Davidson.

Maia, now being expanded to three levels, will officially launch at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2014 for the Independent Gaming Competition and be available as a free demo for a limited time on iOS and Android tablet and mobile devices.

Find out more information: Maia on Facebook, Maia on Twitter, Maia on Tumblr.

Long-time Adobe customer and video aficionado Jacob Rosenberg recently made his directorial debut with Waiting for Lightning, an inspiring documentary about one of the world’s most visionary skateboarders, Danny Way. Highlights of Way’s 20+ year career as a professional skater include jumping the Great Wall of China and winning numerous Gold Medals at the X Games. Rosenberg and his team at Bandito Brothers used video technology from Adobe in the making of the film, including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator.

The movie, dedicated to Way’s amazing life journey, is currently available in select theaters and can be downloaded via iTunes. To learn more about the film and Rosenberg’s experience check out the Waiting for Lightning movie website, or read the behind-the scenes story told by Jacob to ProVideoCoalition and Creative Cow.

Today, we held our Create Now Live event, focusing on all the ways your Creative Cloud membership just got better. We announced updates to many of Adobe’s Creative Suite applications as well as a set of new team, collaboration, and training features within the Creative Cloud. In fact, we announced so much that we thought it would be helpful to have an overview of everything right here.

Photoshop is updating today with more than a dozen additional new features exclusively for Creative Cloud members.  Additionally, the app features HiDPI /Retina display support giving you a crisp interface and more real estate to edit your files. Get all the details here.

Illustrator also features HiDPI /Retina display support, ensuring the UI is as sharp as your work.

Creative Cloud for teams is now available. A team membership includes all of the goodness you get in a Creative Cloud individual membership, plus centralized license management, 100GB of cloud-based storage per user, and access to expert product support.

Adobe Muse has added a set of features designed to make it effortless to create mobile versions of your web site. Learn more about the update here.

Creative Cloud Training will feature over 100 video tutorials from Adobe and leading training partners Kelby Training, video2brain (in Europe) & Attain (in Japan). This content will be available exclusively to full Creative Cloud members and continuous updated with new titles.

We’ll be rolling out this new offering in the next week.

If you were not able to attend these announcements as they happened, you can watch a recording of the event on our Create Now Facebook app.  Other sessions include demos of the new products and features by Adobe evangelists and partners.

Follow @CreativeCloud on Twitter and join the conversation using the hashtag #CreateNow.

Last night the great and the good of New York’s media, publishing and creative industries gathered, with Adobe, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The occasion, a reception to celebrate Adobe’s sponsorship of a unique exhibition – Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop.

Adobe’s chief marketing officer, Ann Lewnes, kicked things off before CEO Shantanu Narayen welcomed everyone and introduced Thomas Knoll, co-inventor of Photoshop and Adobe’s newest Digital Imaging Fellow.

Shantanu and Photoshop co-inventor Thomas Knoll

The exhibition is a reminder that the urge to manipulate photos – for good and for bad, for art and for propaganda – has been with us since the medium itself was invented. The exhibition also reminds us of the profound impact that Adobe Photoshop has made on our visual culture.  Creative people all over the world have pushed publishing, art, and visual media forward using techniques that were either too complex or simply not possible before Photoshop.  Because of this, controversy is never far away from Photoshop.

One of our core values at Adobe is to conduct ourselves in a responsible, socially conscious manner. As we continue to evolve the interaction of art and science within Photoshop, we look forward to the incredible visual content our customers will continue deliver and the positive influences it may have in our shared human experience.

Vegas? Photoshop?  What can possibly go wrong?   Twice a year the faithful gather at PhotoshopWorld, called together by Scott Kelby and The National Association of Photoshop Professionals.   This week, the West Coast edition is taking place in Las Vegas.

A record number of Photoshop pros, over 4000, have descended on Sin City for three days of presentations, in-depth training and inspiration — everyone from digital re-touchers, commercial, wedding and portrait photographers, videographers and graphic designers.

Kicking off proceedings was a typically funky keynote session.  Over the years NAPP’s keynote themes and presentations have become the stuff of geek legend, ranging from Star Trek, Hard Rock, Heavyweight Boxing, NBA, Project Runway and Olympic horse dressage.  One from that list might not be true.  This year (as if we haven’t already had enough of it) it’s the Presidential Election: In Photoshop We Trust.

At this morning’s keynote Adobe’s Grand Photoshop Poobah, Winston Hendrickson, kicked off our section with a State of The Union address on inspiration, creativity and how our engineers are working closely with Apple to ensure that Photoshop can take advantage the new Retina display on the latest MacBook Pros.  It’s coming soon!

Dr. Russell Brown then gave a quick demo of Photoshop Touch 1.3, announced and available today (with Retina display support).  Russell seemed most excited that he was finally able to say that we have now integrated “The Power of German Engineering” into the Photoshop product line – Touch is developed by our talented team in Hamburg, Germany.  Vorsprung Durch Technik, for all you old ad luvvies out there!

Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost then toured us around Lightroom 4, Photoshop CS6 and sneaked Digital Publishing Suite (DPS), Single Edition – which will be added to Adobe Creative Cloud in the next few weeks.   It’s easy to see that DPS Single Edition could be a huge boon for photographers – imagine a wedding photographer now having an iPad App, available free from the Apple Store, that showcases their work in an interactive catalogue or brochure.  Single Edition allows you to publish an unlimited number of single, stand-alone iPad apps.  This is another example of how we’re adding new capabilities continually to Creative Cloud, at no extra cost to members.

The vibe at Photoshopworld was, as it always is, full of energy and boundless enthusiasm.  Not many companies are lucky enough to product that can inspire passionate zeal, like Photoshop does.   At Adobe, it’s not something we take for granted and the Photoshop team are hard at work delivering new features that will ensure…….another four years in digital imaging power.

Thomas Knoll, co-inventor of Photoshop, has officially joined Adobe as an employee and Adobe Fellow, after 24 years as a collaborative consultant for our Digital Imaging team. His exceptional talent and innovation have been critical to the success of Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Lightroom.

Read more from Winston Hendrickson, Vice President of products, Digital Imaging, on our Photoshop blog.

It’s less than a week since we debuted the beta of Photoshop CS6 and already there have been more than half a million downloads of the software.  See what the cool kids over in Photoshop-land are saying about this milestone release of the industry-standard in digital imaging, here.