Bringing teams together in Creative Cloud at Adobe MAX 2021

Creativity has never been more important in our lives. It’s critical to how we connect with one another, share ideas, learn new information, and move business forward in an increasingly noisy world.

But the way we create has changed dramatically over the past few years. We are creating on new and different devices and platforms and across different geographies and time zones. Our workflows are more collaborative, involving a whole host of stakeholders and feedback cycles. And, especially in light of the pandemic, we’re creating in completely new environments, working on distributed teams with hybrid workflows.

At Adobe, our mission is to empower creativity for all. And as creativity adapts to these changes, it’s essential that we make it easy for people to create and work together with their collaborators and stakeholders, no matter how they want to work. That’s why today, at Adobe MAX 2021, we have shared a vision for the next evolution of Creative Cloud — one that is as much about connecting with one another as it is about creative tools. You can hear more about our vision and watch the MAX keynote here.

In support of that vision, we’re announcing new ways for you and your team to collaborate, bring others into the creative process, and get aligned on a cohesive creative vision — all in Creative Cloud:

• Extending Illustrator and Photoshop to the web (beta) will help you share creative work from the Illustrator and Photoshop desktop and iPad apps for commenting. Your collaborators can open and view your work in the browser and provide feedback. You’ll also be able to make basic edits without having to download or launch the apps.
• Creative Cloud Spaces (beta) are a shared place that brings content and context together, where everyone on your team can access and organize files, libraries, and links in a centralized location.
• Creative Cloud Canvas (beta) is a new surface where you and your team can display and visualize creative work to review with collaborators and explore ideas together, all in real-time and in the browser.

Illustrator on the web with basic editing capabilities, Creative Cloud Spaces, and Creative Cloud Canvas are available in a limited private beta. You can apply to join the beta program here.

We are also excited to share that Adobe has completed the acquisition of Frame.io, an industry-leading video collaboration platform. Our Frame.io acquisition will drive video innovation for teams at the world’s leading media and entertainment companies, agencies, and brands, to create amazing videos using a seamless collaboration experience.

The Adobe Design team has worked with these new tools over the past few months and they’ve changed the way we work together. Putting teamwork and collaboration at the heart of Creative Cloud democratizes access and creates transparency around creative projects like never before. Moreover, these tools are integrated right into the apps we use every day, making it incredibly easy for us to extend our workflows without having to leave Creative Cloud and learn entirely new platforms.

To ensure we built these new technologies in a real-world context, we’ve been testing them across our 450+ person, global design team. Nothing quite replicates the experience (and the high stakes) quite like diving in and fully adopting the tools ourselves. We quickly migrated our entire way of working, placing trust in our collaborators and stakeholders and putting our creative work out in the open. Together, we learned from both the joys and frustrations of our colleagues. By taking in their feedback and iterating to improve the product experience, we are continuing to cultivate the customer-centric culture that helps us deliver even better experiences.

Looking ahead, we’ll be working in partnership with you, our global community of creatives, to help shape the future direction of Creative Cloud on the web. These announcements are just the beginning of a broader evolution of Creative Cloud into a total hub for creative work.

Read on to learn more about each of these announcements and be sure to check back for updates.

Open up the creative process with Illustrator & Photoshop on the web

The best creative work happens when you give others a voice in the creative process. Getting the right feedback at the right time helps you make quick decisions and improve the end results of your hard work. But oftentimes, sharing creative work is more difficult than it needs to be, especially when you are working with people who don’t have access to your creative tools. Instead, teams are left stringing together multiple apps and managing feedback in multiple places.

That’s why, today, we are excited to share a major step forward for collaboration, introducing a new way to collaborate with stakeholders on your creative work from Illustrator and Photoshop via the web. Extending Illustrator and Photoshop to the web will help you open up your creative process, express your vision efficiently, and remove a ton of friction from the process.

Now, when you share cloud documents from Illustrator and Photoshop, your collaborators can review and add comments right in the browser without having to download apps or have a Creative Cloud subscription. Their comments will flow right back into the Illustrator and Photoshop desktop and iPad apps, so you won’t have to break your creative flow as collaboration happens. In addition to these useful tools, we are also previewing some basic editing tools in the browser to make minor tweaks and quick edits without having to launch the full Illustrator or Photoshop apps.

Collaborators with Photoshop subscriptions can add comments and make basic edits to Photoshop cloud documents via a web browser.

You can start sharing Photoshop and Illustrator documents for commenting and feedback via the web by updating to the latest versions of the apps.

Photoshop on the web (Beta) with basic editing capabilities is available now in a public beta. To access Photoshop on the web (Beta), click “Open in Photoshop on the web beta” in the header when viewing a Photoshop file in your browser. You can learn more about Photoshop on the web (Beta) in the Adobe Help Center.

Illustrator on the web (Beta) with basic editing is currently only available in a private beta. You can request access to join the beta program here.

Bring your team together with Creative Cloud Spaces

Creativity flows better when everyone works together, and that starts with giving the right people access to the tools and files they need. Oftentimes, creative teams are left scrambling, with content stored all over the place, issues with permissions and access, and confusion over which versions are the latest.

That’s where Creative Cloud Spaces come in. Spaces are a new way to keep everyone on the same page, bringing content, context, and people together in one place to drive creative projects from start to finish.

Creative Cloud Spaces provide shared access to creative files, libraries, and links in a centralized location.

You can think of a space as a shared digital place for your team, where all your creative work and resources are in one centralized location, available to everyone working together on that project. Teams can organize people, spaces, and libraries into teams to ensure the right people have access to shared work. Within a space, you can add creative files you’re working on, share libraries to make sure everyone stays consistent on the project, and post links to any relevant documentation, task boards, and other project resources. As you bring on new team members, simply invite them to whatever spaces they need and they’ll have access to all the files, libraries, and links they need to get up and running.

Spaces are available in the Creative Cloud web app and integrated right inside some of your favorite Creative Cloud apps, including Fresco, Illustrator, Photoshop, and XD, across desktop, tablet, and mobile. From within these apps, you can create new spaces, browse through spaces you’ve been invited to, add content to a space, open and edit creative files, or create a new file for the project. You can also mark spaces as “Favorite” for easy access to the projects most relevant to you at any time.

See the whole picture with Creative Cloud Canvas

Working together requires so much more than just accessing shared content. You and your team need to understand the big picture, see how all your work comes together, get everyone aligned, and ensure you’re all working towards the same goals.

That’s why, today, we’re also excited to introduce Creative Cloud Canvas, a new surface where you and your team can visualize and review creative work with anyone, collaborating together in real-time, right in the browser. This means everyone will see the whole creative picture, helping them get on the same page and making it easy to provide feedback to move projects forward, faster.

Creative Cloud Canvas is the perfect way to bring different types of creative work together in a single view. On a canvas, you can place shapes, text, stickers, images, and working files from other Creative Cloud apps, like hero illustrations from Illustrator or landing page designs from XD. Cloud documents on a canvas are always linked back to the source, so you can open and edit the original creative in the corresponding app with a single click.

Creative teams can use Creative Cloud Canvas to display and visualize creative work and review with collaborators together in real-time.

From this point, your team can lay out content on the canvas, provide context, and invite others to contribute their ideas and feedback. Team members can add stickers and post-its on the canvas, post comments, or hop on a live voice and video chat to discuss. Creative Cloud Canvas makes it easy to collaborate with people who don’t have access to Creative Cloud apps and get to final decisions faster.

There are endless ways you and your team can use Creative Cloud Canvas together. Map out assets for a marketing campaign or product announcement. Share a few concepts for a logo redesign with a client. Create mood boards and style guides for your next project. Or, jump in and host a virtual brainstorming session with your team. With Creative Cloud Canvas, you and your team can explore creative ideas and collaborate together, all in one place.

Creative Cloud Spaces and Creative Cloud Canvas are available today in a limited private beta. We will be actively iterating on these products by incorporating feedback from our beta participants, with plans to expand access to all Creative Cloud members next year. You can apply to join the beta program here.

We are incredibly excited for you to try out these new capabilities and to see what’s possible for you and your team. This new era of Creative Cloud on the web is changing the way our design team works and collaborates. We’ll continue working closely with our design team and our community, evolving these new products and features based on your feedback, to build the future of Creative Cloud together!