Adobe MAX 2021: Creative community highlights in Asia Pacific

This year at Adobe MAX - The Creativity Conference - Asia Pacific’s most brilliant minds gathered over two days to learn, network, collaborate and unleash creative potential. Adobe MAX speakers dialled in from across the globe to share their knowledge freely (and for free) - from basic Photoshop skill workshops and advanced techniques for character creation to kick-starting a creative career and growing an online community.

The opening Keynote revealed ground-breaking news, including the extension of Photoshop and Illustrator to the Web, powerful one-click masking, more neural filters for Photoshop, scalable graphics and 3D updates for Illustrator, multi-scale rendering on After Effects, plus exciting new features for Lightroom, Premiere Pro and Character Animation.

Access to over 400 sessions with subject experts and world-class creatives was an opportunity to acquire skills, discover new features and get inspired. Here’s what creatives from across Asia Pacific learnt and loved during Adobe MAX.

Audrey Alim: Yearly dose of inspiration

For Australian illustrator and mixed-medium artist Audrey Alim, Adobe MAX opened a window to her favourite creators— a glimpse into the minds behind the masterpieces. Featuring images of Adobe MAX speakers, including CJ Hendrey, Chloé Zhao and Joyce N. Ho, overlayed with dazzling designs, Audrey shone a light on her own creativity while paying homage to sessions from across Asia Pacific.

A fan favourite was Things I wish I knew as a Junior Illustration by Adrianne Walujo, who posed the question “What’s your creative success” while defining what individual creativity really looks like.

Cath (aka Cups and Thoughts): Growing an online community

If there’s one thing book blogger and productivity enthusiast Cath knows, it’s how to attend a creative conference — tea, toast and all — and what to watch. Documenting her Adobe MAX experience, Cath was inspired by sessions from illustrator Yuko Shimizu and Australian best-selling author and Youtuber Study with Jess, who spoke to growing an online community presence through multiplatform storytelling.

Arian Teo: Any season in a click

Inspired by Photoshop’s newest neural filters and the likes of Jesús Ramirez, Singapore-based content creator Arian Teo put his learnings into practice using the new Landscape Mixer to create stunning visuals under the name ‘Any season in a click’.

As demonstrated by Arian, Photoshop’s newest neural filters allow creators to reduce complex workflows into one click or a couple of sliders using machine learning.

Gopi Vadsak: Connecting through creativity

India-based Gopi Vadsak has attended Adobe MAX since 2019, where a session by creator Unmesh Dinda inspired her to explore new tools and ways of working in Photoshop. This year, Gopi reflects on her experience as a creator after connecting with Benjamin Lee’s journey as a photographer, which she says is not dissimilar to her own.

Drawing inspiration from Benjamin Lee’s work and others, including Monaris, Gopi perfected her dramatic look through colour and lighting control in Photoshop and Lightroom.

Josh Lam: Stay true to yourself

Josh also participated in Guoxin Wu’s Secret Ingredients in Composite Photography, which covered how to mask objects, match colour and lighting and master the cinematic touch.

More exciting announcements at this year’s Adobe MAX included:

● Photoshop and Illustrator, extended to the Web

● Creative Cloud Spaces and Canvas Enhance Creative Collaboration

● Frame.io & the future of video collaboration

● One-click masking in Photoshop

● A More powerful vectorize for Illustrator enables you to convert any image into a crisp vector graphic with enhanced precision and control.

● Multi-frame Rendering in After Effects which speeds performance by as much as 4x,

● Speech-to-Text captioning in Premiere Pro.

● Lightroom’s Selective Adjustment to apply specific fixes to just a portion of an image.

With sessions by Gouxin Wu, CJ Hendrey, JeeYoung Lee and many other designers, photographers, illustrators, content creators, videographers and business-minded people, Adobe MAX has something to inspire everyone. Tune in today to watch on-demand.