The latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud is now available! We’re pleased to be able to release our new family of Creative Cloud desktop apps and many of the publishing and collaborative features first unveiled at Adobe MAX last month. As a paid member, you now have access to hundreds of new features in across 15 of our brand new desktop apps – including Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC, along with easy integration with Behance, making it easy to publish your work to its global network of 1.4 million creative professionals. Grab all the details on our Creative Cloud team blog. And today’s release is just the tip of the iceberg.

Our creative pro community (yes, that’s you!) creates some of the most innovative, imaginative work out there, and we simply want celebrate the creativity that exists. With that, we’re so excited to kickoff, Create Now: Celebrating Creativity – a series of activities where we can highlight what you do.

First up – Create Now: Remix. In honor of the release, we’re asking you to digitally remix Eames’ famous chair. Show us your remix on Behance (tag your work with “createnow”) for the chance to win an Eames molded plastic armchair, a limited-edition Eames Foundation print and a one-year Creative Cloud membership. Find out how to remix and win in this Behance blog post.

This is just the start of our new Create Now: Celebrating Creativity Series! Stay tuned for a chance to be a part of an upcoming music video, which will be shown in Times Square in “Claim Your Frame”, kicking off next Tuesday, June 25. Heads up that this project will only be open for participation for a 24-hour period, so be sure to mark your calendar and remember to take part! Stay tuned to our Creative Cloud Facebook page and/or @CreativeCloud for all the latest details. It’ll be a summer of fun!

Imagine a design studio. You’ll most likely default to thinking of a cool, hip office filled with tons of creative individuals. Now take that concept and turn it on its head. What do you end up with? The design studio that re-imagined our Creative Cloud logo, Vasava Studios.

Far from a traditional design studio, Vasava does not specialize in anything. In fact, they like to experiment. Each member has the taste for the unexpected and selects projects that may test their creative abilities. Enric Godes states it best when he says, “It’s not a money driving company, but a company driven by passion.” Top that off with a balance between old school and new school styles of design coming together (there is a father/son duo working at Vasava) and you have one of the most unique studios ever.

Bruno Sellés, a partner at Vasava Studios, believes inspiration happens outside of the office. Once he hits the streets of Barcelona, inspiration strikes and his creative process takes off. Creative Cloud plays a huge roll here, because it gives everyone the ability to create wherever. Having the ability to begin a project on Adobe Ideas while commuting to work, uploading it to the cloud and then further refining and finalizing in Illustrator in the studio really opened Bruno’s eyes to how Creative Cloud has taken creativity to a whole new level.

Take a virtual tour of Vasava Studios, meet the team and more by checking out the videos below. Also, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to curb your hunger for all things design.

Vasava on the web:

Website
Facebook
Twitter

Richard Jobson uses all Adobe Pipeline on Wayland’s Song

We really pushed the boundaries of what you can do with the Creative Cloud software. For me, it’s almost like being in a punk band again with Adobe: SpeedGrade and After Effects are my drummer and my bass player and Premiere Pro is my guitarist, who’s been getting much better. I have my band, and now I can tell my stories.

- Richard Jobson

Leveraging the complete Adobe Creative Cloud toolset, Wayland’s Song, which premiered at Cannes on May 25, 2013, was written and directed by Richard Jobson. A former movie critic and television host, Jobson started his career as the charismatic front man for 1970’s punk band, The Skids. After working in broadcast, he began screenwriting in 2000 and was soon directing short films and game cinematics. Early writing and directing highlights included Heartlands, and 16 Years or Alcohol.

As an independent filmmaker Jobson brings a practical, can-do attitude to his work, producing movies that are technically innovative and pioneering in terms of subject matter; such as his visually powerful 2009 human trafficking short, The Journey.

Filmmaker Richard Jobson speaks about Waylands Song at Adobe&Filmmakers event.

Already familiar with Photoshop and After Effects, Jobson started editing with Adobe Premiere Pro in 2011 to conform and finish The Somnambulists – an arresting portrayal of fallen service personnel, recounting their experiences in Iraq, from beyond the grave.

“Premiere Pro allowed me to go back to the original, native rushes that I shot in camera, without changing or degrading the image,” said Jobson. No other software allowed me to do that. With Premiere Pro’s dynamic link to After Effects, completing the film in Adobe software was a no-brainer for me.”

For his latest feature film, Wayland’s Song, Richard Jobson moved to an all Adobe workflow: Starting with Adobe Story Plus, which he used for script editing, preproduction planning, and to generate detailed production schedules, all the material was moved smoothly through Adobe Prelude, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Adobe Audition, and finally SpeedGrade for finishing.

Creating Wayland’s Song

Inspired by a Nordic myth, Wayland’s Song tells the story of a British soldier returning from Afghanistan. While the world he left behind him seemed dark and medieval, the world he returns to appears little better. He discovers that his daughter has disappeared and the film follows his search for her, a journey through friendship, tragedy and ultimately revenge.

“I have always loved a kind of graphic sensibility in my stories,” reflected Jobson. “The Wayland character has almost been lifted from a graphic novel. I love that type of thing. In all of my films I use the camera and lighting to create this quality.”

Wayland’s Song was beautifully shot on the Canon C300 by Director of Photography Andrei Austin. Offload, back-up and ingest was done with Adobe Prelude, which the production team used for shot-logging, adding metadata for use in postproduction, and pre-editing.

Adobe Prelude was used for camera file ingest and shot logging on Wayland’s Song.

Visual effects and graphics were created entirely in Photoshop and After Effects, including a series of colorful, experimental sequences portraying the main character’s collapse into a seizure.  “I suffer from epilepsy myself, and I wanted to visualize that overwhelming sensory experience, where mind and body are flooded with light and you enter a world of hyper reality,” said Jobson.

The film was edited by Steven Sander in Adobe Premiere Pro. Moving to a native workflow allowed for a much faster pipeline that required no transcoding or rewrapping of files. XDCAM, Apple ProRes and H.264 codecs were all mixed on the same timeline in a smooth, seamless process. The combination of HP hardware, an Nvidia Quadro 5000 graphics card and the Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro eliminated rendering from the editing process and allowed instant feedback when working with complex visual effects.

“I was instantly impressed by the speed and responsiveness of Premiere Pro,” said Sander. “It seemed to handle everything we threw at it and it was great to be able to switch between Mac and Windows hardware, as needed, without converting sequences or media.”

Audio clean-up and mixing was done in Adobe Audition by musician and composer Keith Atack, who previously worked with Jobson on Heartlands and 16 Years of Alcohol. “This was a really fun and challenging project. A number of the team have a background in video game production and we tried to bring some of that dynamic to both the visuals and the sound design,” said Atack. “Audition lets me to work quickly and intuitively, allowing me as a sound designer to stay in the creative moment and get instant feedback. That was really useful for the more experimental sections of the film.”

Audio editing for Wayland’s Song was done in Adobe Audition.

Grading and finishing were completed in SpeedGrade by colorist Dado Valentic at his MyTherapy facility in central London. Valentic has been a longtime SpeedGrade user.

“We actually developed the looks for the project in SpeedGrade before we started production,” explained Jobson. “This allowed us to view our shots as they came in with the creative looks applied. It was really helpful – just one of the ways that these tools allowed us to work faster and more efficiently.”

Colorist Dado Valentic talks about his work with SpeedGrade on Wayland’s Song.

“Richard gave me a lot of creative freedom on this project,” said Valentic, “so I could really put SpeedGrade through its paces.  I applied technical looks, which I created to adjust the camera color spaces, along with the creative looks Richard used during production. With SpeedGrade, all of these color adjustments are layered so it’s easy to combine all of them for a final result that is both color corrected and stylized with the artistic look of the film.”

Filmmaking with Adobe Creative Cloud

Jobson joined Creative Cloud in 2012, soon after it became available, and couldn’t be happier with the service and the tools. “Adobe Story Plus gives me a great place to start my projects, and with the whole package I have all the tools for production right through to finishing. This software gives me the freedom to make films the way I want to make them.”

Wayland’s Song premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival on May 18 and will see theatrical distribution in the UK and Europe in September 2013.

Learn more about Adobe Creative Cloud and the latest tools for filmmakers mentioned in this article.

Join Richard Jobson for an Ask a Video Pro online seminar at 10 am PST on June 13, 2013. Signup is free http://adobe.ly/p6ZMbd

There are so many exciting things happening at this year’s HOW Design Live conference including a closing keynote from our very own Scott Belsky, as well as sessions led by Adobe evangelists. What’s more, we’re hosting a Tweetway in conjunction with the event and we’re giving away some sweet prizes.

Want to be a part of it? Here’s how to enter:

Between June 10 and June 25, send a Tweet with the hashtag #AdobeHOW and share your Adobe Ideas drawing, Adobe Kuler theme, or a link to a project in your Behance portfolio for a chance to win a Creative Cloud membership. We’re giving away one 5-year membership and ten (that’s right, 10!) 3-month memberships. Don’t miss out on a chance to win.

We’ll select winners at random, from all submissions, on June 25; winners will be notified on June 26 via Twitter. For full details, check out our HOW Tweetaway Sweepstakes Official Rules.

This is your chance to show off your work AND possibly win some great prizes. Be sure to follow Creative Cloud on Twitter. Also, if you’re at the conference, be sure to stop by the Adobe booth to say hello, get answers to your questions, and learn the latest about your favorite tools.

Get ready – the next generation of video production software is almost here. Later this month all you video pros will be able to get your hands on Premiere Pro CC. But why wait until then to learn the ins and outs? The Beat blog (@premiumbeat) shares tips that will save you time and get you up to speed quickly with the changes and new features in Premiere Pro CC.

Note: the tips and images below were taken directly from The Beat blog.

Assembly Workspace

Premiere Pro CC adds the new Assembly Workspace. This is a workspace layout that has a large Project area with the Program & Source Monitors sharing space. This is a handy workspace if you like to use Premiere Pro’s Hover Scrub, then set In & Out and use shortcuts to quickly Insert or Overwrite edit.

As the name suggests, this workspace is designed for quickly creating a rough cut in Premiere Pro.

Improved Multicam
In Premiere Pro CC you can mix different media, frame rate and sample rates. You have the new option of “sync to audio” which is handy if you have audio from a separate audio recorder that you want to sync to video clips.

Add Edit & Duplicate Frames
You can access settings for “Show Through Edits” & “Show Duplicate Frame Markers” from the Timeline Display Settings in the Sequence.

Now you can choose to see through edits and duplicate frames when you have used part of a clip

Write Keyframes in Audio Clip Mixer

Premiere Pro CC adds a Clip Audio Mixer to make working with clip audio easier. They also add the ability to record audio keyframes by selecting the “write keyframes” button. Click the button and then move the Fader to record keyframes while the clip is playing. There is a Preference for thinning out keyframes so you can then modify them as needed.

We’ve just outlined a few tips here. Be sure to visit the blog post and study up on the other six tips provided. Also, don’t forget to check out the Premiere Pro CC dedicated video playlist we put together on Adobe TV. As always, be sure to follow Creative Cloud on Facebook and Twitter.

Earlier this month we showed you a preview of Kuler for the iPhone, the new Kuler website and how you can access your Kuler themes in Illustrator CC. Today, we’re launching the new site and making Kuler available on the App Store.

For those of you who missed Kuler in the MAX keynote, Kuler allows you to create inspiring color themes and explore hundreds of thousands of color themes created by other users. The Kuler iPhone app lets you capture color themes anywhere, using the iPhone camera. All the themes you create with Kuler, on the web or with your iPhone, can be accessed with other Adobe applications such as Illustrator and Ideas.

The full benefits of Kuler are available to Creative Cloud members. The Sync Colors feature 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 – only available in Creative Cloud.

If you are an active Kuler user, you may notice a few pages and features missing from the new Kuler website. I’m writing to explain what’s missing, why it’s missing, and what you can expect to see in the coming weeks and months. Here’s an overview of what you won’t find on the new site:

Create a theme from an image: We know many users really like the “Create from an Image” feature. Unfortunately, this feature was not ready for the new site launch. So, rather than launching a buggy or half-baked feature, we decided to take a bit more time to get it right.

We intend to add this feature to the site as soon as it’s ready. Until then, you can use the free iPhone app to create themes from images.

Color space “slider” controls: We talked to a lot of Kuler users about the slider controls. Some users like them and others don’t. The main complaint we heard was that the sliders add unnecessary complexity and take up too much space.

So, we opted to not add the sliders and err on the side of making the creation experience simple. Though, we decided to keep the “brightness” slider control since some colors spaces don’t have a brightness variable. We’d love to know what you think. You can voice your opinion on the Kuler forum.

Change the order of colors: In our research, we found most users did not know you could re-order colors on the old Kuler site. And, it’s actually quite a bit of work to build this feature. So, rather than re-building a feature many users don’t know about or use, we wanted to hear from you first. Please visit the Kuler forum and let us know what you think.

Avatar: Most of the users we talked with about Kuler avatars were indifferent. In fact, they asked us to focus on other features first. So, that’s what we’re doing–we’re focusing on some of the most requested features first.

Community spotlight and Pulse: The Community Spotlight and Pulse were beta features that never really gained any traction. So, we opted to not continue with these features.

API: We’re working to rebuild the Kuler API to offer more robust capabilities. Until then, we’re no longer issuing new API keys. If you already have a key and are using the API, your service will not be interrupted (your key will continue to work).
We’re always looking for feedback and would love to hear what you think about any of these topics—please join the discussion on the Kuler forum.

Kuler iPhone app

“I work without seeing what I’m creating. Programming is like writing words.”

– Artist and web designer, Kazumasa Teshigawara aka “qubibi”

If qubibi’s words rings true for you, you might want to dive a bit deeper into his story. qubibi’s inspiration spurs from his observations around his home city Tokyo, Japan. He uses the city’s energy to craft his designs, emphasizing in animation. When asked how he turns an idea into art, he reveals, “I begin by writing and then I imagine music. After that, I start using digital tools like Photoshop without making any sketches, I just work directly on the computer and see how it evolves… In my case I can’t create art without Creative Cloud.” Check out his recent redesign of the Creative Cloud logo and more background on his work in the video below:

The Creative Cloud provides designers like qubibi with built-in shortcuts for everything from debugging to simple animations so they can spend less time on tedious tasks and focus on what makes web design fun, creativity. qubibi uses Creative Cloud to access his work from any computer at any time and benefits from sharing his work with fellow designers on Behance. Find out more about Creative Cloud and the future for web designers like you.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more web design news, tutorials, inspiration and more.

Inspiration is everywhere here at Adobe MAX! Here’s a quick recap of our events from yesterday.

Day Two Keynote: Community Inspires Creativity

David Wadhwahi, our SVP of Digital Media, opened up our day two keynote, then handed it off to creative luminaries to share their stories. We heard about breaking the brief from Paula Scher, were inspired by embracing limitations from Paul Hansen, and experienced the making-of-details from innovative creatives such as Erik Johansson and Rob Legato. Check out the playback available here for the next 24 hours.

[Show as slideshow]

Sneak Peeks

There were a number of special guests at the MAX sneaks. First up, Rainn Wilson, actor and co-creator of SoulPancake, who opened up the night to talk about creativity, what it meant to him and how it was the catalyst for how SoulPancake came to be.

Then we got an early look at amazing technologies that might become product features in the future. Host Ben Forta shared the stage with Rainn and celebrity guest, actress/comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub, as we walked through exciting developments from the our engineering teams. Everything from the future of drawing, as inspired by Project Mighty, to experimenting with light in photos and videos, to audio layers to remove unwanted background noise were all shown at MAX. Check out some of the sneak peeks below.

Sneak: Playing with Light

Sneak: Perspective Warp

Sneak: Audio Layers

Stay tuned for more as we wrap up our final day at Adobe MAX 2013!

And…we’re off! Adobe MAX is buzzing today as we kicked things off with our day one keynote session, “A Creative Evolution.” We announced a slew of news today, 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 until tomorrow morning’s day two keynote at 10 a.m. PT 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 conversation on #AdobeMAX on Twitter and Instagram and/or follow @AdobeMAX.

Watch the overview below and get all of the details from our experience design team in “Adobe XD explores the analog future.”

Adobe Creative Cloud for teams allows you and your team to get the entire collection of latest and greatest CS6 tools, along with lots of team-specific features that make working together easier than ever. So the question is; is it right for you? This series helps Adobe customers, such as creative directors and IT professionals, understand if Creative Cloud for teams is a good fit…

• Size Doesn’t Matter – Design agency? Growing startup? Regardless of your workgroup situation, Creative Cloud for teams fits.

• Cloud collaboration + latest creative tools = staying ahead of the curve – Creative Cloud for teams makes it happen. That’s right –you and your team receive the latest updates as soon as they’re available.

• Changing needs = changing team –  With Creative Cloud for teams, adding and removing licenses for team members is a walk in the park.

• HELP! – Creative Cloud for teams provides you with help when you need it. Enjoy two deep-dive expert support instances (per seat per year).

Interested in hearing how Creative Cloud for teams is benefiting Scott Kelby’s own Kelby Media Group? Check out this video to see how Creative Cloud for teams allows them to reach millions of people all over the world through websites, podcasts, online training, magazines, and more:

Got questions? Let us know in the comments below or visit us on Adobe.com. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more information about Creative Cloud for teams.