Calling Adobe’s newest direction a "grand new adventure", Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch unveiled Adobe Touch — six new tablet-based applications — and Creative Cloud, a new way of delivering creative services through the cloud, at Adobe Max today.Adobe Touch will bring professional-level software capabilities to mobile devices, enabling people to create designs not only for — but also on — tablets.

Adobe Creative Cloud will move the company’s traditional creative suite of products into the mobile era with cloud-based creative applications, file management, file sharing and community collaboration.

“This model of software will be a great mode of change for us at Adobe as well,” said Lynch.

Six Adobe Touch Apps enable easy touch-screen creation, sharing

Central to Adobe’s move towards mobile are the release of six touch-screen applications, which will first be available for Android devices in mid-November. When they become available, users of Android tablets and then Apple iPads will be able to download and install the programs from the appropriate app store.

The apps will retail for $9,99 each or they can be purchased as part of the membership subscription in early 2012. More information on pricing will be available next month.

Here is an overview of the six Adobe Touch apps.

Adobe Photoshop Touch: Image creation & editing
Picture a simplified version of Adobe Photoshop, only using on-screen gestures with your fingers instead of mouse-based interactions. The Adobe Max product launch demonstration showed how easy Photoshop Touch is to use.

The new Scribble Selection Tool lets users simply scribble over the areas they want to keep and those they wish to remove to get a clean selection around the image and then cut it out. Further refinement is available through the Refine Edge tool from Adobe Photoshop. Common Photoshop tasks like creating and merging layers or adjusting image setting are also available through simple touch gestures.

Photoshop Touch also integrates with Facebook and Google search will help with finding and sharing images.

Adobe Ideas: Drawing application
Use a finger or stylus to draw with this simple vector-based drawing application. The digital sketchpad uses vector, layers and colour themes to help users quickly create drawings that can then be imported into Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.

Adobe Collage: Combine creative elements
This new product allows users to create “mood boards” that combine images, drawings, text and Creative Suite files. Intended to capture the "mood" of a project, this tool is useful at the launch of a design project. It is possible to quickly bring in many images and using gestures you can move, rotate, move up and down or position images on the screen. The files can be shared with others or transferred into Photoshop.

Adobe Proto: Fast web prototyping
Creating your next webpage layout could be as simple as sketching a few gestures onto a screen, with Adobe Proto doing the rest to convert those scribbles into functioning HTML/CSS/jQuery pages. The program makes it easy to add interactive elements like menus and video files, with the ability to make interaction between layout pages as well.

Adobe Debut: Showcase your work
On the road and need to showcase work to a client? Adobe Debut lets users open tablet-compatible versions of Adobe Creative Suite files on their tablet. Feedback and notes can be captured by adding notes and drawings on top of the file.

Adobe Kuler: Explore the world of colour
Colour can make the difference between a design that inspires and one that fails to engage. Built on the Adobe Kuler online community, the Adobe Kuler app can be used to generate colour themes for design projects. Users can explore half a million themes from the Adobe Kuler community, extract colours from images or use tools in the application to create new themes. Options include being able to constrain colours to those that harmonize well together and selected themes can be exported for use in other Adobe Creative Suite products.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Workflow change is central to the new Adobe Creative Cloud service, making it easier to access and share files no matter where you are.

Offered on a subscription-basis, customers will be able to access creative applications, services and community collaboration for a monthly fee.

Subscribers will also be able access the latest desktop applications in the Adobe Creative Suite as well as other software like the Adobe Touch apps. Memberships will become available in early 2012.

Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO, emphasized that Creative Cloud apps are not limited to mobile apps, but are available to desktop applications as well.

“This model of software will be a great mode of change for us at Adobe as well,” noted Lynch. “This is a transformative time for Adobe.”

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