This year has been a strange one to say the least. Practically all parts have been effected. Due to this the amount of updates here have been very few. Something that is hopefully rectified soon.
One thing that has happened at the usual time is the update to Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications. 2021 versions are now available.
The 19 upgraded CC desktop applications are Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, InCopy, Animate, XD, Dimension, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, After Effects, Audition, Character Animator, Media Encoder, Prelude, Bridge, Camera Raw, Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. Also Acrobat DC Pro has been improved, if not a fully new version.
Some of the major new desktop product features include: Sky Replacement (Photoshop), Advanced Color Grading (Lightroom), 3D Design Space (After Effects), Recolor Artwork (Illustrator), Liquid Mode (Acrobat), 3D Transforms (XD), Speech-to-Text (Premiere Pro), Roto Brush 2 (After Effects), Speech-Aware Animation (Character Animator), and Neural Filters (Photoshop).
In addition to the main desktop applications upgrades, Adobe has also announced Illustrator for the iPad (version 1.0). Illustrator joins its cousin Photoshop, which first arrived on the iPad last year. Illustrator on iPad is included for Creative Cloud members with current access to Illustrator on desktop.
Adobe Aero, this is a 100% free new authoring app for creating and viewing augmented reality (AR) experiences, and will be coming to the desktop (Mac and Windows). Currently in Beta.
As well as these new applications and the updates Adobe has also updated its Stock collection with a free section. Over 75,000 top-notch images, vectors, illustrations, templates, 3D models, and videos available to everyone at no cost and completely royalty-free.
All in all it looks a good selection of new and improved versions of their desktop applications. Some more updated than others, and some interesting new features have been added.
One thing to note with these updates is that Adobe have also changed the system requirements. As theses applications get bigger and better, they also become more power hungry. Thus the system requirements have evolved, both on Windows as well as on Mac, in order to take advantage of the latest operating system features and technologies… On Macs, the CC 2021 release now requires macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or later. If you’re not yet running a compatible version of macOS, then you can get a free upgrade directly from Apple to Mojave (10.14) or Catalina (10.15). Be aware, however, that in Catalina, Apple has dropped support for any older 32-bit programs that you may have. And while still in beta/preview, macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) is supported by Adobe as well.
On PCs, Windows 10 (version 1903 or higher) is a fully-supported platform for all Creative Cloud applications. Importantly, except for Acrobat DC, the CC 2021 apps no longer support 32-bit or any Windows 7 or Windows 8 operating systems.
You will also find that some of the new features require Internet access all the time as the filters work using cloud access. More on this in a separate post.
New updates are available now.