Like Marvel’s Avengers, you’ve put together a stellar team. So now what? Creative Cloud for teams not only puts the best tools in the hands of your team, but also enables them to seamlessly share files from any device. Since this offer is still new, we wanted to educate you all on the benefits of joining. We’ve recapped five educational updates about Creative Cloud for teams that we’ve shared on the Creative Cloud Facebook page and Twitter channels. Check them out and embrace the learning.

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• Enables better collaboration

You can share files with colleagues inside and outside of your organization.

• Low TCO, best way to stay current

 Keep your members up-to-date with the latest software at a low cost

• Members have 1:1 access  to Adobe product experts

As a member, you have 1:1 access to Adobe product experts to ensure workflow support.

• Centralized purchasing and license management tools

Creative Cloud for teams makes it easy for your IT department to centrally purchase and manage Creative Cloud

• Users get 100GB cloud-based storage

Don’t let storage limits keep you up at night. Enjoy 100GB of cloud-based storage per team member

We’re excited to announce that Adobe evangelists and other creative leaders are bringing Create Now to a city near you on our Create Now World Tour! Now through mid-April 2013, you can attend a Create Now event in your area to learn what’s new in Adobe Creative Cloud. Whether you’re a photographer, graphic designer, video professional, or web designer, there are innovations in your favorite tools and services to get up to date on. Check out the Create Now World Tour schedule to see when we’ll be in your area, and don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter (hashtag #CreateNow).

If you’re in the U.S., check out and register for the below upcoming events, hosted by local Adobe user groups.

• Baltimore Event – March 4th 2013
• Chicago Event – March 7th 2013
• Seattle Event – March 9th 2013
• Boston Event – March 11 2013
• Los Angeles Event – March 13 2013
• San Diego Event – March 16-17th 2013
• Cleveland Event – March 18th 2013
• San Jose Event – March 23rd 2013
• Kansas City Event – April 4th 2013

Also, if you attend a Create Now World Tour event in person, you will receive a discount code for Adobe MAX 2013. Save US$400 — get a full conference pass for just US$1,095! Hope to see you all there!

We’re bringing you the ultimate creativity conference, Adobe MAX, taking place in Los Angeles, California on May 4-8, 2013. If you’re new to MAX, it’s a conference that is all about creativity and expressiveness.  MAX brings together designers, developers, video professionals, photographers, and more to exchange creative ideas and inspiration. So if you create, you won’t want to miss MAX. When you’re there, you’ll be amongst industry pros and visionaries, and will learn about the latest technologies, techniques, and strategies for delivering your best creative work.

The icing on the cake? Buy a full conference pass, and you’ll get an annual Adobe Creative Cloud membership!

Be sure to check out the top ten reasons why you should attend Adobe MAX. We hope to see you all there!

The Create Now event has officially come to a close. If you missed all of the news and demos, check out the keynote on-demand above and additional Meet the Pro sessions on Adobe TV. And for those looking for the highlights, we have you covered, including snippets of the #CreateNow Twitter chat with our evangelists. Check out our recap below:

Adobe Photoshop – Big feature updates including Retina Display support, Smart Object support for Liquify, Copy CSS, and Conditional Actions. Check out these, including additional features and services on the Creative Cloud team post about Photoshop version 13.1.

Adobe Muse – Now, you can create mobile versions of your website without writing code. Get all of the details on how graphic designers can create mobile sites from the Creative Cloud team.

Creative Cloud for Teams – The much-anticipated service for teams is now available! The team offering includes centralized license management, 100 GB of cloud-based storage per team member and access to expert product support.

Creative Cloud Training – Exclusively for Creative Cloud members, in one week you will be able to explore a new library of online training content from Adobe and leading training partners like Kelby Training, video2brain and Attain.

read more…

Are you excited to hear what’s next in Creative Cloud?

Tune in, today December 11 at 10 a.m. PT for our Create Now event to hear what’s next in Adobe Photoshop, explore new ways to take your design skills from print to online and mobile, learn how teams can work better together with Creative Cloud, plus much more.

Don’t miss a beat; watch all the action here:

Be sure to follow @CreativeCloud on Twitter and join the conversation using #CreateNow. And get your questions answered by Adobe Evangelists during our Twitter chat from 11:30-12:30 PT. Just post a question using #CreateNow.

Director Ross Ching has mastered the art of the time-lapse video and has recently done it in very innovative way. He has created an eerie video series, titled “Empty America,” by removing the hustle and bustle that normally is the heartbeat of major U.S. cities, using Creative Suite 6 applications, Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro. Check out our exchange with Ross on his inspiration and some of his quick video tips.

Adobe: Can you give a quick description highlighting your creative process/creative workflow for Empty America?

Ross Ching: People really find connections with things they recognize in situations that they don’t recognize. It’s almost as if the viewer is in on an inside joke. It’s something that I always try to incorporate into my work, and that’s why time-lapse, super slow motion and stop motion are so prevalent on the Internet. So when deciding which cities to feature in this series, I wanted people who have never even been to the locations to be able to pick out landmarks that they’ve seen before. 

What was your inspiration behind the project?

I live in Los Angeles. I drive in Los Angeles. I think about traffic a lot in Los Angeles. A couple years ago, I discovered Matt Logue’s Empty LA photographs. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but every time I was stuck in rush hour all-hour traffic, I found myself thinking, “What if tomorrow everyone’s car disappeared?” What would that scene look like? How would people react? How quickly would the atmosphere rebound from centuries of fossil fuel emissions?

So I took Matt Logue’s still photography concept and applied it to something that I do best — time lapse. That Los Angeles video was very successful, and so I pitched an expansion of it to Thrash Lab, a destination for digital filmmakers created by Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Network. They really liked it and believed in my work, and it’s now the biggest set of videos on the channel.

Do you have any useful tips or techniques to share with the community?

When creating something for the Internet, people’s attention span is VERY short. Think about how you look at other videos on YouTube and think about the how long it takes you to either skip through the video or click the back button. Our main goal as a video creator is to get the viewer to watch from beginning to end without skipping or hitting the back button. If they’re able to do that, they’re MANY times more likely to share the video with a friend — and that’s how seeds of viral videos are made. So let’s look at the elements to do that:

Must be short — 3 or 4 minutes or less. I’ve got many other tabs open and my pot of water on the stove is about to boil.

The 10 second hook — Probably the most important aspect. We need to WOW the viewer right off the bat. That means either showing them something they’ve never seen, or some kind of filmmaking technique that’s really unique. Whatever it is, if your friend doesn’t say WOW when you tell them the first 10 seconds of the concept, it’s back to the drawing board.

Sustainability — Once you have them hooked, you need to create a device that pulls them to the end. Some examples: a story, beautiful cinematography, creative art, exciting visuals that are rarely seen. Anything that will get them interested in seeing what happens at the end.

Check out more from the Empty America series on Thrash Lab’s Facebook Page.

What’s coming in Photoshop? Check out the video below and see how many new features you can identify. To stay up to date on the latest developments, be sure to join us December 11 for our streamed event on Facebook, Create Now Live. Bookmark it: http://on.fb.me/Sj0YBZ. You won’t want to miss this!

If you’re looking to get your hands on some Create Now schwag, join in on our #CreateNow Sweepstakes.

*Please note that there is no requirement to be a Facebook user to view or access this event application. 

The Create Now Live event is coming up on Tuesday, Dec. 11 and we want to have #CreateNow conversations with you well ahead the event. Daily, starting today through Dec. 11, we’ll be spurring conversation around why you create, what inspires you and more from @CreativeCloud – and we hope you’ll join us on Twitter using the hashtag, #CreateNow!

We’ll be randomly drawing 5 lucky winners daily* for those participating the #CreateNow conversation. Up for grabs – a Creative Cloud messenger bag. On event day we’ll have more prizes up for grabs including Creative Cloud Memberships and an Adobe MAX pass.

 We’re looking forward to talking to all of you on Twitter, and don’t forget to join us on the Creative Cloud Facebook page to attend the Create Now event via live stream (you don’t need to sign into Facebook to view content) Register here: http://bit.ly/CreateNow_SM.

*Terms & Conditions apply

Adobe’s product teams are keenly aware of a creative professional’s desire to experience the highest quality creation experience. That is why I am delighted to announce our plans to optimize a selection of our products to display your content and creations on HiDPI displays, including the Retina Display available on the new MacBook Pro. Over the next few months, key Adobe products will deliver HiDPI display support to all customers on current releases.

HiDPI displays allow for a dramatic improvement in image fidelity and resolution. Naturally, designers, photographers and creative professionals want to take full advantage of this new technology. Software that is not native to HiDPI display uses interpolation to duplicate pixels to fill the screen, meaning text is not as sharp and images don’t have as much detail. The increased resolution of these displays requires that each product update the interface of the application and ensure that the content or the creation itself is displayed accurately with the appropriate level of fidelity. As an example, to enable HiDPI display support in Photoshop requires the replacement of 2500 icons and cursors and other engineering work which will be complete and ready for customers this Fall. This resolution shift in the new display technology presents unique challenges to teams that support bitmap, vector or video content. Therefore each product team will be releasing support for HiDPI display for Apple’s Retina Display as soon as the development is complete and tested for each individual product.

We expect to update the following products with HiDPI support, free to all CS6 and Creative Cloud customers, over the next few months:

Dreamweaver

Edge Animate

Illustrator

Lightroom

Photoshop

Photoshop Touch

Prelude

Adobe Premiere Pro

SpeedGrade

We are currently evaluating the roadmap for when other products may support HiDPI displays, and we will announce those plans as they are finalized.

At Adobe we work hard to support the latest innovations. We will continue to release security patches, bug fixes and support new hardware changes, like HiDPI display support, to all of our customers outside of our regular development cycles just as we have always done.  Additionally, with Creative Cloud we now have the opportunity to release new features as they are ready, outside of major release cycles. On August 28, Illustrator released several features exclusively to Creative Cloud members. I am excited to announce that beginning this Fall, even more our flagship products, including Photoshop, will begin to release features exclusively to Creative Cloud members. Creative Cloud members will be able to enjoy the latest product enhancements as they are ready without having to wait for major product releases.

This is an exciting time. Stay tuned over the next few months for more exciting developments to come.

We know a lot of you have been waiting for this news, so we’ll get right to it: Lightroom 4 is available right now as part of your Creative Cloud membership. You can download and install it from the Apps & Services page.

The new features in Lightroom are simply fantastic. The team has really found the right balance between powerful controls and an intuitive user experience. Image importing, management, and processing is better than it ever has been. The new video, geolocation, and book publishing tools all point to how quickly Lightroom is responding to the world’s changing technology.

For more information, please visit our Creative Cloud Team Blog.