Adobe's Generator aims to smooth Creative Cloud design process

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Adobe on Monday announced a new addition to its Creative Cloud suite, a feature named Generator that is aimed at streamlining the web and screen design process.



The new Generator feature is a platform that integrates with Adobe Photoshop, making it easier for users to move content from the popular image editing program into other Creative Cloud and third-party applications. Adobe has also rolled out a new Generator-built Photoshop CC feature ? free for Creative Cloud subscribers ? that delivers image assets in real-time, meaning users don't have to extract, crop, resize, and export Photoshop assets.

?Today we?re excited to usher in a new era of Photoshop productivity for anyone designing for the Web or mobile apps,? said Adobe's vice president of products Winston Hendrickson. ?Now with Generator, customers can skip the hassles of slicing and exporting from Photoshop and speed up day-to-day web and mobile app production through an intelligent and customizable workflow.?

Adobe's new Generator add-on for Photoshop CC also enables saving and real-time updating of tagged layers and groups within the program. Layers can also be exported as JPEG, GIF, and PNG files, and users have the option of automatically scaling those images for Retina displays and different levels of compression.

Thanks to Generator integration, users can one-click import files from Photoshop CC into Edge Reflow CC. The one-click import capability applies to both images and text assets from within Photoshop.

Generator features a JavaScript API, meaning that the platform is extensible via third-party apps and services. Adobe will soon make Generator and the real-time asset generation feature available as open source projects.

Adobe will be showing off Generator's capabilities during the Create Now World Tour, a series of free seminars featuring Adobe evangelists sharing tips and techniques. The first event is scheduled for September 19 in San Francisco, Calif. More information is available at www.adobeeventsonline.com/createevent.

The Generator platform is available immediately to current Creative Cloud subscribers at no additional cost. Customers interested in signing on to Creative Cloud, including a limited time offer of 40 percent off for existing CS users, can compare plans at the company's website.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member
    Because that's what we need, yet another Adobe application.
    Yet another "feature," that's really a *patch* for a f*ckup in one of their other apps, elevated to the status of an app itself.

    Go Adobe!
  • Reply 2 of 18
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    gazoobee wrote: »
    Because that's what we need, yet another Adobe application.
    Yet another "feature," that's really a *patch* for a f*ckup in one of their other apps, elevated to the status of an app itself.

    Go Adobe!

    My exact thought ... I am surprised they didn't call it Sky Bridge.

    I always liked Apple's approach, in FCPro 7 for example, 'Send to Soundtrack Pro'.
  • Reply 3 of 18
    auxioauxio Posts: 2,717member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gazoobee View Post



    Because that's what we need, yet another Adobe application.

    Yet another "feature," that's really a *patch* for a f*ckup in one of their other apps, elevated to the status of an app itself.

     

    Agreed.  I'm not quite sure what their strategy is with this... if they're trying to entice non-cloud holdouts to bring their content into the cloud and start paying subscription fees, you think they'd be giving this away for free to non-subscribers as well (alongside a free cloud trial period).

     

    EDIT: Missed the 40% off.  Kinda makes sense now.

  • Reply 4 of 18
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    Oh boy. Another Adobe "makes everything easier" add-on tool that's made from a scripting language, and is a feature that should be inside Photoshop or Dreamweaver.

    It won't entice me to rent software.

    How about putting WYSIWYG editing back into Dreamweaver for those of us that got into Dreamweaver in the first place because we don't like scripting, formatting languages or code. That was a nice "feature" Adobe trashed when Dreamweavee became a big-ass CSS attribute editor for monstrous websites done via text editing rather than a flexible WYSIWYG building environment for websites of any size. I almost wish Front Page existed on the Mac (is FrontPage still a WYSIWYG website building tool? it's first few versions sucked but it got really good around 2006).
  • Reply 5 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by auxio View Post

     

     

    Agreed.  I'm not quite sure what their strategy is with this... if they're trying to entice non-cloud holdouts to bring their content into the cloud and start paying subscription fees, you think they'd be giving this away for free to non-subscribers as well (alongside a free cloud trial period).

     

    EDIT: Missed the 40% off.  Kinda makes sense now.


     

    40% for one year only.

  • Reply 6 of 18
    auxioauxio Posts: 2,717member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleZilla View Post

     

     

    40% for one year only.


     

    Yeah, I wasn't trying to make it seem like a good deal for CC holdouts in the long run.  I was just trying to figure out the marketing angle based on the fact that Generator is only available to CC subscribers (when it would make more sense to provide it to non-subscribers as a way to entice them to become subscribers).

  • Reply 7 of 18
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member

    I simply ADORE having 10,000 miscellaneous services running on my machine to support Adobe's actual apps!

     

    And I'm just processing this... I have Creative Cloud (kicking and screaming at all the bugs and the monthly bill) which gives me Photoshop CS6 etc.... but Photoshop CC is a SEPARATE app and a separate download? What? Do I need a team of experts just to tell me what they heck Adobe is doing with my CC subscription? I wonder which has more bugs, CS6 or CC... what fun finding out...

  • Reply 8 of 18
    For us happy CC subscribers, this is a great new feature for Photoshop. I'm looking forward to using it to generate the retina images for my Muse site.
  • Reply 9 of 18
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dysamoria View Post

    How about putting WYSIWYG editing back into Dreamweaver for those of us that got into Dreamweaver in the first place because we don't like scripting, formatting languages or code. That was a nice "feature" Adobe trashed when Dreamweavee became a big-ass CSS attribute editor for monstrous websites done via text editing rather than a flexible WYSIWYG building environment for websites of any size. I almost wish Front Page existed on the Mac (is FrontPage still a WYSIWYG website building tool? it's first few versions sucked but it got really good around 2006).

    What are you talking about? DW has always featured both code view and design view as well as a split screen view. WYSIWYG editing for web pages is pretty limited though, especially now that everything is dynamic using include files. DW can't really display JS, conditional actions or database queries, which is how all modern websites work. Today's designers need to learn how to code or just stick to Joomla and Wordpress, but even they require some advanced setup to get it working right.

  • Reply 10 of 18
    v5vv5v Posts: 1,357member

    Kevin, are you writing this with the assumption that anyone reading the article will already know what the product is for? Maybe it's just me, but I didn't really get a good sense of what the product is or does. The article felt like a regurgitation of Adobe's promo copy, and since Adobe's ad copy is always vague and unspecific, so was the article.

     

    I now know that Adobe has a new product and what it's called but that's about all.

  • Reply 11 of 18

    You Adobe CC haters are really pathetic. The more you yammer on about how bad Adobe is, the more you reveal your true colors: dilettante users of pirated copies who now feel threatened when Adobe moves onto a different (and better for all) business model.

     

    I've been a CC subscriber for over a year and am very pleased with the CC versions. PS 14.1 is a nice upgrade, and I'm already using the "Generate" feature on a job. It actually is saving time, and it's easy to use.

  • Reply 12 of 18
    Originally Posted by DanielSW View Post

    better for all) business model.

     

    Imagine you don't actually own anything you own.



    Sure is better, huh¡

  • Reply 13 of 18
    Over 40,000 folks have signed.They don%u2019t like Adobe Creative Cloud licensing.Show @Adobe how you feel. https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model

    Another more fiscal way to show @Adobe you dont like the CC licensing scheme.http://adobe2014.tumblr.com #adobe2014
  • Reply 14 of 18
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    Imagine you don't actually own anything you own.



    Sure is better, huh¡


     

    You don't even own your own creative work, by Adobe's model!

     

    If I stop paying every month (and no, I have never pirated anything) then I can no longer open or edit my own creative works. Do some people find that acceptable?

     

    Do they find it acceptable that Photoshop CS6 still has some of the same bugs as CS3, and new ones as well? Really basic stuff: like the rectangular marquee changing size, at certain zoom levels, so it doesn't reflect what you actually selected as shown in the inspector. And changing the stye of a word in a text box will sometimes change the style of an unrelated word somewhere else. And the crop tool sometimes randomly adding or subtracting a pixel to the dimensions you keyed in. Terrific. Do these happen to all people? Most of them probably don't. But these bugs are documented in forum postings from multiple sources, acknowledged by Adobe admins, and yet go unfixed, for years sometimes, while they keep charging our credit cards. Seriously, CS6 is two steps forward, two steps back compared to CS3. And I'm shocked at how few major new features all those versions added, and how ramshackle the UI still is.

     

    It may be a while until someone makes a good PS alternative that can open modern PS files and meets all my needs. But when it happens, I'm there!

  • Reply 15 of 18
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    nagromme wrote: »
    If I stop paying every month (and no, I have never pirated anything) then I can no longer open or edit my own creative works. Do some people find that acceptable?

    It depends on which creative works. If you make a painting in Photoshop, a website in Dreamweaver, an animation in AE or a brochure in Indesign then you can open and edit the resulting authored creative work and in many cases intermediate files and source media in other software no problem. I don't like the idea of not being able to open the project at all after stopping paying but this is an issue after paying off the main amount.

    So for example, you pay $2000 for the Master Suite and you can open and edit files forever vs just over 3 years of CC payments but realistically, you don't run the same software forever. You can't for example run CS2 on modern Macs and even CS5 isn't compatible with Retina displays (it still opens files but hard for some to work with). There are still options to run the software on older hardware but you wouldn't want to do that so you'd have little choice but to pay again or suffer it out.

    I think they really ought to allow the software to open and edit project files outside of a valid license even if it's for a limited period of time every day but these kind of features might be easier to crack. If they link it to the license server, it might work out.

    Outside of a valid license: launching an app contacts the license server and validates say 15-30 minutes of usage for that day, runs one app at a time and the time limit is for all apps combined. This allows full access to any project to edit, change and export files. This means people can't be very productive with the software but you aren't locked out of your projects.

    If Adobe ever went under and the license server stopped validating software, that's a concern but if that was to happen, the company assets would be bought by someone else and most likely continue to be sold and the industry would have prepared for that eventuality anyway and have alternatives to migrate to in plenty of time. The subscription business model does a good job of ensuring that won't happen unlike the standalone model, which is killing off other businesses because eventually people do just stop paying.
  • Reply 16 of 18
    Over 40,000 folks have signed.They don%u2019t like Adobe Creative Cloud "Eternal Rental" scam .Show @Adobe how you feel. https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
    Another more fiscal way to show @Adobe you dont like the CC licensing scheme.http://adobe2014.tumblr.com #adobe2014%uFEFF
  • Reply 17 of 18
    Imagine you don't actually own anything you own.


    Sure is better, huh¡

    You're biting the hand that feeds you with all this fussing and yammering about Adobe. You're in really sad shape if you can't own something by simply seeing and reaching it. We love the new CC software and how it helps us do our work.
  • Reply 18 of 18
    Originally Posted by DanielSW View Post

    You're biting the hand that feeds you with all this fussing and yammering about Adobe. You're in really sad shape if you can't own something by simply seeing and reaching it.

     

    What in the world is this supposed to mean, and how does it answer the question I posed?

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