Just like people are shifting from consuming books and video content as physical media to digital and online consumption, Adobe is evolving from shipping shrink-wrapped boxes to offering easily downloadable software through the Cloud. You may or may not have heard about Adobe Creative Cloud, but you’ve probably heard about Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Premiere Pro. Creative Cloud is the most convenient and affordable way to get these powerful Adobe Creative Suite desktop tools with ongoing updates, plus many more tools and services like Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Story Plus and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, so you can deliver professional video productions from script to screen and beyond. All for less than the price of a cup of coffee per day!

On December 11th, Adobe announced new Photoshop features exclusive to Creative Cloud members, the availability of Creative Cloud for teams, and other news.  In this article, you’ll learn more about Creative Cloud and why it might be a great choice for you, and get the scoop on the recent announcements.

Integrated tools for faster video production

So, what exactly is in Creative Cloud?  For video professionals, Adobe offers industry-leading tools that cover the complete production workflow from ‘plan’ to ‘playback’.  Creative Cloud is the way you download all the tightly integrated Creative Suite tools and services you need to create everything from documentaries and commercials to television news and feature films.  One of the advantages of Creative Cloud membership is the ability to get ongoing feature updates, newly released products and more to stay up to date – all for one affordable monthly price. Creative Cloud gives you the following powerful pre- and post-production software tools:

• Adobe Premiere Pro for editing your way with true native format support, real-time performance, a sleek user interface, and the ability to mix and match formats on a single timeline. Adobe Premiere Pro offers tight integration with After Effects and Photoshop, as well as roundtrip editing workflows with Audition and inter-operability with other non-linear editing software and third party tools – so you can streamline your post-production workflow.
• Adobe After Effects for visual effects, motion graphics, compositing, and animation. After Effects CS6 is faster and more responsive than ever before thanks to a powerful new caching system called Global Performance Cache, while new 3D advancements such as the 3D Camera Tracker and 3D Ray-traced engine introduce a new creative dimension.
• Adobe Photoshop Extended for digital imaging magic, new creative options, and the Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine for blazingly fast performance. Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended delivers all the imaging magic in Photoshop CS6 plus 3D graphic design and image analysis tools*.
• Adobe Audition for efficient audio editing, sound design, and mixing
• Adobe SpeedGrade for advanced color-grading and finishing
• Adobe Prelude for easy shot logging, previewing, and rough cut assembly
• Adobe Story Plus for powerful screenwriting, production scheduling, and reporting

But these are just some of the tools and services in Creative Cloud that are specific to a video workflow. Read on to learn about all of the other great tools and services that will also help you promote yourself or build your business!

Filmmakers around the world are discovering how tools in Creative Cloud can speed up their production workflows. Customers like Academy Award winners Rob Legato (HUGO) and David Fincher  (The Social Network), and top broadcasters like Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC, Hearst, and Turner are using Adobe products to create compelling feature films and broadcast content.   Adobe has received great feedback about Adobe CS6 video products, with tens of thousands of people switching from Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer to Adobe Premiere Pro, including Bill Yukich (Red Hot Chili Peppers- “Brendan’s Death Song”), Philip Bloom, Vincent Laforet, Popular (Burton Snowboards “13”), Second City Communications, Sandals Resorts, and Bill & Ben Productions / Made Visual Studios (A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman).

Great ongoing value for both individuals and teams

At $29.99US per month for your first year for upgrading Creative Suite customers or $49.99US per month standard pricing (annual contract), Creative Cloud offers all the tools in CS6 Master Collection plus a host of services including Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition, Adobe Business Catalyst, Adobe Muse, and helpful training content. 

Creative Cloud has various membership offerings:  you can join with an annual membership, or sign up for a month-to-month membership.  You get the most economical value when you sign up for an annual Creative Cloud membership.  If you are thinking of switching to Adobe Premiere Pro, you can try the 30-day trial included as part of a Creative Cloud free membership or sign up for the month-to-month membership with no cancellation strings attached, giving you the flexibility to experiment with the software as you like.

Aside from flexible membership options, Creative Cloud offers members exclusive and immediate access to the latest updates and product innovations as soon as they are released including:

• Over a dozen new Photoshop features announced December 11, 2012 — including Smart Object support for Blur Gallery and Liquify for non-destructive editing freedom, new workflow timesavers, new 3D options, Conditional Actions that will run only under set parameters, and more. In addition, this latest release offers Retina display support**. 
• Illustrator new features released in August 2012 that will let you automatically package Illustrator projects and their related files for fast and accurate hand-offs, quickly unembed images in Illustrator files, and more efficiently access information in linked files.
• Adobe Story regular updates  – with eight updates so far this last year.
• Exclusive Adobe Dreamweaver features announced in September 2012, including easier authoring of HTML5-based websites, new support for compositions from Adobe Edge Animate, more robust FTP transfers, and more.
• New Adobe Muse features allow you to create unique layouts for mobile versions of websites, without writing code.

Also announced on December 11th, businesses or workgroups can now get Adobe Creative Cloud for teams, which offers all the perks of a Creative Cloud individual membership, plus 100GB of cloud-based storage per person, and direct access to Adobe’s support experts.  In addition, Creative Cloud for teams includes administration tools for centrally deploying and tracking your licenses, making it easy to manage your software investment. You can easily assign or redeploy seats – or assign an administrator the rights to do so – as the team grows or changes.  Creative Cloud for teams is priced at $49.99US per user per month for your first year for upgrading Adobe CS3 or later customers, with standard pricing of $69.99US per user per month (annual membership). 

Previously, Creative Cloud for individuals was only available on Adobe.com and through select retailers like Amazon and Staples. But Creative Cloud for teams is available through Adobe's extensive network of certified resellers worldwide. So wherever you live, chances are likely that Creative Cloud is now available to you.

Tools and services for promoting your work

Many of our professional video customers use other Adobe products such as Acrobat, Dreamweaver, and Lightroom. With Creative Cloud membership, you have access to all your favorite tools you use on a regular basis, but also have the opportunity to try and use other Adobe products and services, so you can learn new skills and expand your repertoire, or reach new people in new ways.  Many customers use these other tools as a complement to Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and other video tools or to promote their videos to their audience:

• Write scripts and organize your production with schedules and reports using Adobe Story Plus
• Create storyboards, pitches, posters, flyers, and other documents for your film with Acrobat and Adobe InDesign
• Create and host a website to promote and sell your films using Adobe Muse (with no coding) or Dreamweaver (if you are comfortable doing some coding), and our web hosting services called Business Catalyst (not only do we give you the tools to build your site, we'll even host up to 5 published websites for you, at no additional cost!)
• Publish your portfolio as an iPad app or create an iPhone app for your film using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition – with unlimited publishing of as many apps as you can create.
• Organize and manage your photos and pull high-res stills with Lightroom

And with the Creative Cloud Training offering, also announced on December 11th, you get access to an extensive library of cross-product tutorials and trial courses from renowned training partners Kelby Training, video2brain, and Attain as part of your Creative Cloud membership. You can use Creative Cloud Training to master the art of postproduction using the latest features in Adobe CS6 video products, or learn one of the above new tools that you’ve always wanted to try. We’ll be rolling out this new offering in the next week.

Try it yourself
As you can see, Creative Cloud membership gives you one powerful, comprehensive, and continuously updated toolset for creating and promoting your work using an integrated Adobe workflow, for an affordable monthly price. Try it yourself for free and let us know what you think in the Comments section below. What works well for you? What could we do better? What does Creative Cloud do for you? 

• Try Creative Cloud for free
• Learn more about Creative Cloud
• Learn more about the video products in Creative Cloud
• Read about recent Creative Cloud announcements
• See the Creative Cloud membership options

* 3D features and some GPU-enabled features are not supported on Microsoft® Windows® XP.
**Retina display support in Photoshop Extended is not exclusive to Creative Cloud members.