Creative Cloud updates highlighted by Adobe 

Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive of Adobe Systems, a US-based multinational software company, stressed several times during an interview session with global media that Adobe’s mission is founded on the recognition that everybody has a story to tell.
And this year Adobe has again unveiled and demonstrated the software it has created to achieve that dream, at Adobe MAX 2016. There, the creative community came together to see the latest in the firm’s Creative Cloud innovations and be inspired by the world’s best creative minds.
The latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud, a suite of software tools for drawing, page layout, photo editing, video editing and Web design, included a new breed of applications in experience design, photography, virtual reality, character animation and 3D compositing.
Narayen said Adobe’s thinking was driven by the goal of enabling people to use the power of the firm’s tools more easily.
“For us, it’s all about [the] impact of millions of people  [telling their stories]. For example, if you look at Adobe Spark [a Web and mobile solution for sharing social-media content], everybody can tell [their] story via Spark Post, Spark Page, and Spark Video,” he said.
During his keynote speech at the launch of the three-day Adobe MAX 2016 in San Diego early this month, Narayen told a room packed with an audience of 10,000 that the world around us was changing faster and more intensely than ever before.
He said Adobe believed the power of creativity and design would make the world a better place. 
“Our mission has always been to change the world through digital experiences,” he said.
He said it was the creativity of Adobe’s customers that inspired and drove the innovation of its products.
Bryan Lamkin, Adobe executive vice president and general manager for digital media, said creativity had a huge impact on all aspects of people’s lives.
He quoted a result from the “Adobe State of Create Study 2016”, which dug into what people believe about creativity and its impact on business. He said more than two-thirds of respondents said creativity helped all of them be better workers, students, parents and leaders.
Almost half of the respondents said they consciously paid more money to have the right product experience, he added.
At MAX, a number of new Creative Cloud innovations were introduced, starting with Adobe Sensei, the company’s venture into artificial intelligence (AI) and one of the major announcements. Sensei is a new framework and set of intelligent services spanning the entire Adobe cloud platform that is aimed at improving how customers design and deliver digital experiences.
Adobe Sensei is focused on solving today’s complex experience challenges in the design, document and marketing fields, where only Adobe has decades of expertise and market leadership, Narayen said.
“I called it Adobe magic,” the CEO said.
He added that leveraging its machine learning and AI, as well as trillions of content and data assets, Adobe Sensei would be one of the company’s biggest strategic investments.
“We’re excited to open it up to our broader ecosystem of partners, ISVs [independent software vendors] and developers to enable even more innovation,” he said.
Adobe also introduced Project Felix, an design tool that enables graphic designers easily to create high-quality, photo-realistic images by combining two- and three-dimensional assets for projects such as product shot comps, scene visualisation and abstract design.
Users have in-app access to 3D models, materials and lights from Adobe Stock as well as the ability to customise specific properties such as materials, to perfect lighting, and to adjust camera angles. Real-time rendering allows users to preview work while editing and before exporting to Photoshop to complete their design.
The company also launched a new Mac release of Adobe Experience Design CC (XD), which it said was the first all-in-one tool for designing, prototyping and sharing user experiences for website and mobile apps, now available with two highly anticipated features – Layers and Symbols support.
First made popular in Adobe’s flagship design tools Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC, XD allows Layers and Symbols to address the specific needs of user-experience designers. Designers using XD can now easily share prototypes and get feedback in real time.

The next version of Adobe Premiere Pro CC, which includes auto-aware virtual reality that seamlessly detects and applies the correct setting to stereoscopic and monoscopic media, was announced at the MAX event. First introduced at IBC, another annual creativity event, updates to Premiere Pro, After Effects CC and Prelude CC will also include a Beta of Team Projects that allows teams and enterprise customers to co-edit and collaborate on Creative Cloud projects.
Adobe also released a new Cinema 4D renderer in After Effects aimed at speeding up efficiency and quality of 3D content generation.
Adobe’s Creative Cloud updates will be available to subscribers before the end of this year.