MAX 2013: What’s New with Adobe CC Design Products

Adobe MAX 2013 keynote: Illustrator CC

On Monday, Adobe kicked off its annual MAX conference by announcing its forthcoming new version of Creative Cloud, along with rebranded desktop and mobile applications. Here’s what to expect from the rebranded Adobe InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, and more.

Adobe InDesign CC headlines the company’s handful of design-centric applications, with faster performance thanks to native 64-bit support at long last, allowing documents to use all of the available system RAM. InDesign CC also brings a new, modern user interface (below) with a darker look and Retina Display support.

Adobe InDesign CC: Dark UI, fonts

InDesign CC also cuts down on constantly scrolling to find a frequently used font, thanks to the ability to mark favorites for later use. Along with Illustrator CC, InDesign CC also taps into Adobe’s new Sync Fonts, a Creative Cloud feature that allows designers to locate the perfect font and instantly install it as part of the regular monthly subscription fee. The two applications also share new font search and filtering tools as well.

Adobe Illustrator CC: Individual character editing

Adobe Illustrator CC introduces a new Touch Type tool for manipulating individual characters in the same way other objects can be edited, creating brushes from images (shown at top), multiple file placement, CSS extraction, and much more.

Designing a visually rich, HTML5-powered website is still as easy as ever with Adobe Muse CC, which adds the ability to move elements in different directions (and at different speeds) when scrolling, as well as in-browser editing changes–perfect for clients to update Adobe Kuler for iPhonecontent without changing the overall layout of a website.

For the first time ever, Adobe InCopy CC is included with Creative Cloud. This InDesign CC companion application adds a modern UI with Retina Display support and font search to help writers, editors, and designers work on the same document together without affecting each other’s work.

Last but not least, Adobe is making some changes to two of its design-centric mobile apps. Adobe Kuler (right) will now be available as an iPhone app, perfect for using the built-in camera to grab color swatches on the go and keep them synced to both the tablet version and Adobe Illustrator CC on the desktop.

Adobe Ideas is also being updated to add Kuler integration, color themes, more accurate drawing, and social sharing to Facebook and Twitter. Best of all, the app will now be a free download for all users.

Adobe will release the updated Creative Cloud worldwide on June 17, available as an annual membership for only $49.99 per month; existing owners of CS3 to CS5.5 are eligible for a discount on their first year for only $29.99 per month, and other upgrade options will also be available.

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