I knew I’d have to do it sooner or later as long as I continue to teach. And, oh, wow, look at my Dock:
That’s a lot of Adobe software, folks.
I joined Adobe Creative Cloud the other day. I downloaded everything! It took a long time, and my computer was burning hot when it was over.
I don’t know what half of these programs do. I must spend some time mining the video tutorials on the Adobe site to learn about all the fantastic new stuff I can now do. Jeepers, maybe I’ll be able to export SVG from Illustrator soon.
One piece of good news. The Extensions Manager version I had before CC crashed each time I tried to use it. The new one works. I have two extensions managers now, one for CS6 which works on Fireworks CS6, and one for CC, which works on everything else.
The biggest piece of news is that I completely misunderstood what Adobe Creative Cloud was all about and how it was going to work when I first wrote about it. So here’s the deal for those of you who are confused like I was.
When you purchase a plan, you can download any or all the software you paid for access to. It will automatically be updated (which I sincerely hope happens faster than the initial downloads). You can keep files on your own computer, you can back them up to the cloud, you can share them with collaborators – or not. You can install on more than one computer, too.
You see that curvy looking icon at the far left in the image of my Dock at the top? That’s the CC icon, and it works like going to the app store for updates (well, until iOS 7 kicks in). You see what you have downloaded, what’s available for download, and what’s ready to update in a handy little interface.
You don’t have to be connected to the Internet to use the software.