2B: The 5 Principles You Need to Know about Using Creative Cloud
But four things continue to improve to make Adobe Creative Cloud increasingly user-friendly: (1) the interfaces, menus and workspaces are more clean and simple, (2) the tools and functions are more intuitive, (3) the applications start-up in ways that make it easy for beginners to get going, and (4) the programs are better engineered to be faster and more reliable.
Each generation of Adobe Creative Cloud becomes easier for novices to learn, without comprising the growing power that “lies under the hood.” So, have confidence that, with a little bit of patience and guidance, it’s easier than ever “to learn to ride the bike” of Adobe Creative Cloud, because these applications have been developed, refined, and improved over decades of experience and innovation. Adobe Creative Cloud is now accessible to mainstream users, not just creative professionals or advanced techies.
- There are “many paths to god” using Creative Cloud
There is no singular “right” way to do anything – what’s most important is that the approach makes sense to you and works for you. Creative Cloud applications are so powerful and universally designed that there are many effective and efficient ways to get a job done – there are “many paths to god,” as the saying goes. Not only are there different ways to use different tools within each application, but also you have choices among applications that can accomplish the same tasks. I’m told that you can edit video within Photoshop, if that works for you, although Adobe Premiere was clearly designed to do this better. Likewise, I have used Premiere Pro to edit and generate some still images, just because I was more familiar with functions there that helped me get my work done “at the speed of thought.”
This resource is created for students and teachers, and so all of the advice it provides is based upon the easiest and most reliable ways to accomplish basic tasks, but you can and will eventually discover your own approaches. For example, the video tutorials use pull-down menu commands as often as practical because they are the easiest and most reliable to find, but some users might prefer instead to memorize and use keyboard command short-cuts as soon as possible.
- Creative Cloud works collaboratively, with anyone, on any device
As you first begin to create with these applications, you are more likely to work alone, especially in college courses where you receive individual grades. But, very quickly, especially in the professional world, you will find yourself working collaboratively, with a variety people, in a variety of places.
Thus, an extremely powerful and important dimension of Creative Cloud is its collaborative, cloud-based platform. Your work is easily shared and stored among your team, on whatever devices they use, wherever they use them. And, when it comes time to “go live,” your work can be easily published or broadcast, especially across social media, because it was developed in “the cloud” all along.
It’s always stunning to see the “magic” of Photoshop or Premiere Pro to do things like completely swap out the backdrop behind your selfie from the ugly wall of your basement office with the majesty of a gorgeous landscape. We’ve known for a long time that Creative Cloud applications have those awesome powers. But, what you will increasingly find just a magical and powerful are the collaborative and distributed powers of Creative Cloud. When you first start out, it’s difficult to appreciate how important the “cloud” and all of its synching and library features can be. But, once Creative Cloud makes it easy for you and your team to work on a project simultaneously -- even work on a project from mobile devices -- you will begin to appreciate the real power of the Creative Cloud.
- The Creative Cloud desktop dashboard manages your applications and account
Adobe Creative Cloud for Windows and Mac OS have an awesome pop-up menu that makes locating, installing, and running all of your applications very efficient and well organized. If you click on that infinity icon, a self-explanatory list of applications pops-up (or pops-down), which indicates which apps you have installed, which apps you could install, and which apps have updates. Get used to clicking on that icon to manage your Creative Cloud apps. One important note: it is advisable to only download the applications you need one at a time, as you need them. Very few of us need all of the Creative Cloud applications downloaded and installed on our computers. Just use the ones that you need, even though they are all part of the your Creative Cloud subscription.
As a Creative Cloud subscriber, you also have a web-based “dashboard” of Creative Cloud account settings. Your online account settings are needed to access some Creative Cloud features such as BeHance and Portfolio, but, most importantly, the online “dashboard’ helps you manage your assets and libraries that are “synced” through the cloud.
- Creative Cloud is one sweet suite
There is no suite of creative applications that are as professional, comprehensive, complementary, and powerful as Adobe Creative Cloud – and that’s not a debatable claim, because there is no other collection like it, period.
So, one of the incredible advantages and most powerful features about Creative Cloud is that its applications work together so seamlessly – they are a matching set. If you are putting together a magazine layout in InDesign and you need to adjust some aspect of a photograph, you don’t need to jump outside InDesign, launch Photoshop, work in Photoshop, then re-important the photograph back into InDesign. These kinds of operations can happen in an instant, “at the speed of thought” because the applications have such synergy.
