Adobe updates Illustrator CC and InDesign CC with new features
Adobe on Thursday issued updates for Illustrator CC, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and InDesign CC, introducing new features and user interface improvements to the professional design software.
Announced through Adobe's official blog, Illustrator CC takes a cue from users by incorporating a number of highly requested features like straightforward image cropping, a function previously accomplished by offloading documents to other apps.
With Image Crop, Illustrator CC users now have the ability to immediately crop images placed into a document with intuitive crop handles. Much like cropping tools offered in other Adobe products, including the flagship Photoshop CC, Image Crop in Illustrator CC comes with measurement tools and a familiar dotted bounding line.
In addition to inline image edits, Image Crop automatically discards unused image data to reduce file sizes and improve overall performance.
Aside from the new cropping option, Illustrator CC introduces a Color Themes Panel for creating, exploring and saving color themes for later use. The panel UI also extends to other Adobe apps, offering users consistency across various platforms. For example, themes can be generated from pictures taken with the Adobe Capture mobile app, which are then pushed to Illustrator through Adobe's cloud.
As for InDesign CC, the document layout software received a new UI that lets users jump between Adobe apps and flagship cloud features. A redesigned New Document Panel is included for quickly starting new projects with document presets and recent document settings.
Further embedding Adobe CC elements into the main app is integration with templates from Adobe Stock, which can be accessed via the New Document Panel.
Adobe's Creative Cloud plans start at $19.99 per month for single apps like Illustrator CC, while access to all CC apps comes in at $49.99 per month.
Announced through Adobe's official blog, Illustrator CC takes a cue from users by incorporating a number of highly requested features like straightforward image cropping, a function previously accomplished by offloading documents to other apps.
With Image Crop, Illustrator CC users now have the ability to immediately crop images placed into a document with intuitive crop handles. Much like cropping tools offered in other Adobe products, including the flagship Photoshop CC, Image Crop in Illustrator CC comes with measurement tools and a familiar dotted bounding line.
In addition to inline image edits, Image Crop automatically discards unused image data to reduce file sizes and improve overall performance.
Aside from the new cropping option, Illustrator CC introduces a Color Themes Panel for creating, exploring and saving color themes for later use. The panel UI also extends to other Adobe apps, offering users consistency across various platforms. For example, themes can be generated from pictures taken with the Adobe Capture mobile app, which are then pushed to Illustrator through Adobe's cloud.
As for InDesign CC, the document layout software received a new UI that lets users jump between Adobe apps and flagship cloud features. A redesigned New Document Panel is included for quickly starting new projects with document presets and recent document settings.
Further embedding Adobe CC elements into the main app is integration with templates from Adobe Stock, which can be accessed via the New Document Panel.
Adobe's Creative Cloud plans start at $19.99 per month for single apps like Illustrator CC, while access to all CC apps comes in at $49.99 per month.
Comments
But it stop freaking messing with the UI every other update. You guys are killing my productivity.
funny how motivated they are to keep innovating when they want you to keep paying every month.
Although I like Illustrator, I, like you, got tired of feeding the Adobe monster every month for something I only use every couple of months. I got Affinity as a way to ease my withdrawal but it turns out it's so good I haven't missed Illustrator at all.
You can buy it on the App Store. There's a link to a free trial at the bottom of the product page on their web site: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/
I know the feeling, and I'd love to tell you that you're not missing anything, but I was surprised by how much better the CC version of Illustrator is compared to CS5. It's been about a year since I cancelled my subscription and went to Affinity (see my previous post) so I no longer remember exactly what all the improvements were off the top of my head, but I do remember that node handles are MUCH better and layer handling was more intuitive. If you use it a lot, you may find the new version more enjoyable to work with.
You may also want to check out Affinity Designer. I'm surprised by how good it is.
what am I thinking, paying for software I use everyday and getting regular feature upgrades.
I should really get therapy.
You have to realize something though, I've used Illustrator ever since (unless I'm misremembering) version 2 or 3, back in the early 90s, so I'm very used to the workflow and toolset.
I found that the new version didn't require learning new working methods or tools per se, just that the existing ones worked much better. I'm not an Illustrator power user though, my uses of it were fairly basic. Mostly hand tracing bitmapped logos to create vector versions. That's node-handle intensive though, which is where I really felt the improvement in CC.
Obviously I didn't love it enough to keep paying though! Affinity is suiting me just fine now.
Or maybe you don't have the balls for it?
I understand being bummed, but on the flip side, your CS-whatever license will work forever. Eventually you'll need a dedicated Mac to run legacy MacOS, but if it's important to you and you're unable/unwilling to join the current license model, that's what you need to do.
I don't work for free. I expect ongoing payment for ongoing work. I can't fault Adobe for following the same model.
Software, especially cloud software is a service. The fact that it was initially marketed as a tangible product is going to go down as a historical footnote.
When software is is treated as a service it generally gets better.
Adobe, Microsoft are good examples.
even if you hate the licensing model, the software has objectively improved functionally since the change.
Hell, even my hosted time tracking software (Harvest) is light years beyond the old perpetual licensed tracking app I used to use.
From time to time I am able to offer my clients things I couldn't when I did their project. They may decide that what I offer now justifies paying me for another project, in which case we enter into a new contract for that project. Or, they may decide that the new offering doesn't add sufficient value to the product I make for them, and choose to stay with what they have.
What I create for a client becomes theirs, and doesn't disappear when they stop paying me.
I disagree with the argument that software is a service (in most cases, certainly in the case of things like Photoshop and Illustrator). It is a "tangible" product, in that it requires no further intervention from the provider after delivery to perform its intended function.
The subscription model puts me in the position of paying in advance with the hope that added features will both materialize at all and actually benefit my work. I believe the onus should be on the provider of the product to create an incentive for me to provide them with additional revenue by making newer versions of the product attractive to me.
I don't accept that premise. You haven't said how it gets better or why it would as a result of treating it as a service. I can easily tell you why it would not: there's less incentive because the revenue will continue (at least for a while) whether the developer does anything or not.
If additional revenue REQUIRES substantial improvement, then there's an incentive.
...whereas Avid is an example of how it can go the other way. Old bugs persist and the features added are not the ones users want.
On the other hand, Final Cut Pro X is sold as a "product" rather than a "service" and it has improved significantly since its disastrous launch (or so I'm told, I don't actually use it myself).
Recurring billing is absolutely not an assurance of development that is beneficial to the user.