Adobe is discontinuing it’s Edge Tools

According to an Adobe Blog, Adobe is about to cease support and updates for it’s Edge tools, including Edge Reflow, Edge Inspect, and Edge Animate. Some of their functionality will be implemented within Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Muse – and will also be covered in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Pro replacement, Adobe Animate – which is due out in January.

Creative Cloud members cans till download and use the Edge products, , and security updates will still be implemented

Please see their original blog post at: http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/update-about-edge-tools-and-services/

Adobe is Severely Limiting it’s Font Installations

In a recent article on InDesign Secrets, I can finally find the reason why so many of my InDesign classes have been having font errors when using files from the Adobe courseware. It seems that InDesign – and all of the Adobe programs, for that matter, are no longer installing the fonts that used to come with the programs! I’ve been using Adobe programs for too many  years than I want to count, so of course, I have the fonts installed, but so many of my students are downloading demo software for their classes, and work in an environment with security limitations, so they can’t easily access Adobe’s Typekit (part of the Creative Cloud suite).

In my opinion, this is a terrible move on Adobe’s part, and I can’t quite figure out why they’re choosing to do it. Over the years, I’ve seen Adobe seemingly losing touch with their users in quite a few ways, but in software that’s ABOUT design, I can’t imagine what they’re thinking.

To view the post on InDesignSecrets.com, please visit http://indesignsecrets.com/adobe-drops-fonts-leaves-users-stranded.php

There’s an earlier article about the issue here: http://indesignsecrets.com/happened-fonts-indesign.php   (which includes a work-around)

And, for a list of the fonts originally installed, and mostly still necessary, please see Adobe’s article here: http://www.adobe.com/products/type/creative-suite-6-installed-fonts.html

As for me, I’ve backed up ALL of my installed fonts into a directory I use for my font management program. I suggest you do the same. If you’d like instructions for doing so, please comment on this post.

 

Good deal on Adobe Training Videos by TrainSimple

I’m not usually one to suggest people learn from others, considering Adobe Training is what I do – but I firmly believe that giving students ideas for supplemental learning can always help them to practice what I teach and help to embed the information they learn in my classes.

So, I thought sharing a deal on a lifetime subscription to TrainSimple’s Adobe Training might be helpful to those who want reference information, and ways to practice what I teach. Take a look at this deal – good ONLY today!

https://deals.cultofmac.com/sales/lifetime-of-train-simple-adobe-training

BACKUP – automatically to the Cloud

BACKUP!!!

So, you guys know I’m very neurotic about backing up my files, and I found this service that gives you unlimited space for automatic backups – IN THE CLOUD!

I have dual hard drive backups in my home office, PLUS a separate backup for my startup drive. But living in SoCal, with earthquakes, I’ve always been concerned about earthquake damage hurting my backups, leaving me with nothing.

Recently, I discovered BackBlaze.com. for $50/year, they offer unlimited space for backups, allow the backup of external drives, retain backups for 30 days, and will back up almost everything (system files and Applications won’t get backed up). I have 4 internal drives and several externals. All of my media (photos, videos, and even the files created as temporary files for my video editing), all of my office work files, personal files – and it’s safe and encrypted. All offsite, and all for $50! There isn’t a limit on file size, either – so my largest multi-gig files can be uploaded. It’s not exceptionally speedy, but I can even control the speed of the backups.

I highly recommend checking them out at BackBlaze.com.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC to include MorphCut

Adobe Premiere Pro CC to include MorphCut – There’s something with the potential for greatness coming to the new Adobe Premiere Pro. In the right hands, this can be used for smoothing edits between different portions of a continuous clip, without having to cut over to a B roll, making (interviews in particular) edits cleaner and fixing a potential slew of problems.
My worry is what it’s going to do in the wrong hands. For example, the hands of politicians, news media, unscrupulous attorneys…
Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6wPUtKg-Ac

New Adobe Character Animation Application Shown at NAB

At the NAB Conference from April 11th to April 16th, Adobe announced a new app, coming to Adobe Creative Cloud members.

Adobe Character Animator does just what it says it will do. You can use pre-created characters that appear to come with the app, or you can create your characters using Photoshop or Illustrator and animate them. I believe I’m initially most impressed with the facial recognition and animation activation, which takes prompts directly from your webcam.

Of course, version 1 of anything will have it’s issues – but this looks really promising!!!

http://www.rgbhq.com/nab-2015-adobe-character-animator-preview/

Adobe Releases Acrobat Pro DC – with some important warnings!

This past week, Adobe announced a new version of Acrobat Pro. It’s called DC (DC stands for “Document Cloud” and the interface is VERY different from what we’ve been used to (the upgrade to X from version 9 was very significant, but this one’s a whole different ballgame!)

With this version, Adobe puts a great deal of effort and emphasis on working with PDFs on computers and IOS and Android devices. It’s fully 64 bit, and it’s system requirements require newer Operating Systems, browsers, and more.

It’s available as a stand-alone subscription, or it’s included in the full Creative Cloud subscription. To see the version differences, please visit:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/pricing/pricing-compare-versions.html

One GIANT CAVEAT! The installation of DC will uninstall your previous versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro, including any customizations and plugins you’ve made. The only way to protect your customizations is to back them up, prior to installing DC. On Windows computers, there is NO way to run both version together (previous installations didn’t support it, but did allow it). On the Mac, several people have managed to successfully install DC and continue to run XI without problem – although those people are few and far between.

The app looks pretty cool – but do beware of the notes above. If you ever want to go back to XI, you’d have to uninstall DC and reinstall XI. From my personal experience so far, this is also the actual case for 99% of Mac users as well.

MANY new Adobe Updates coming SOON!

Up until today, I was under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) to not reveal what’s coming up to MANY of my student’s favorite Adobe Apps – but today, with the announcement at NAB, all may be revealed. In fact, Adobe themselves revealed what’s to come to Adobe Premiere Pro (oh, my goodness, what they’re doing!), After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, Muse, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Audition!

You can check out the upcoming changes to the Video Editing apps here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/coming-next-to-adobe-pro-video-tools/

I’m sure there’re going to be many more blog posts at Adobe, to tell us the rest…

FREE Photoshop Techniques Ebook!

Jeffrey Tranberry’s Adobe Blog has posted a VERY nice 214 page ebook about Photoshop Techniques. It specified “screen designers”, but the techniques and ideas can be applied to any media. You can find the download here: http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2014/03/pixel-perfect-precision-useful-design-tips-photoshop-techniques-for-screen-designers.html?PID=2159997 There are also “Extras” that can be downloaded for the book, which can be downloaded here: PPP Extras (scripts, etc., 0.5MB) Don’t you just LOVE FREE!!!

Adobe Extends Discount Offers

Here’s an email I received from Adobe tonight:

We are excited to let you know about the following offers — some of the best deals around!

PS-SPECIAL-EXTENDDeadline Extended to Dec. 8 to get Photoshop + Lightroom for $9.99/mo

Due to the fantastic response, the offer for the the Photoshop Photography Program , available to anyone for $9.99/month, has been extended until December 8th. This is available worldwide, wherever the bundle is available on Adobe.com.

The offer includes access to Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5, 20GB of cloud storage and a Behance ProSite.

CC-SPECIAL-EXTENDExtended Upgrade Plan to Creative Cloud for $29.99/mo Until May

We are also extending our Creative Cloud membership $29.99 promotion into 2014. With this extension, anyone owning CS3+ who has not yet made the move to Creative Cloud, will continue to be able to join Creative Cloud at the rate of $29.99/month for their first year of membership.

Here’s the link to all their current Creative Cloud Discounts:
http://www.adobe.com/products/discount-software-coupons.html?promoid=KHQFR