At the end of November, Adobe released updates to most of the Creative Cloud applications, but the holidays and the TechByter schedule kept me from getting to them until now. New features aren't as plentiful, as big, or as bold as they were when release cycles were 18 months instead of 6 months. And new features are likely to show up at any time because the system updates itself.
The continuous update concept is becoming more common. Microsoft does it with Windows 10 and Office 2016. NiNite, a utility I've described previously, automatically downloads and installs updates for dozens of programs. Browsers such as Firefox and Chrome receive frequent updates. The text editor UltraEdit can automatically download and install new versions as they're released and even applications that don't update themselves automatically now usually let us know when an update is ready.
The November 2015 release (CC2015.1) adds a lot of features to a lot of applications. I'll start with Lightroom and Photoshop because those are the applications that are probably used by most people -- from amateur and professional photographers to graphic designers and website developers.
In the June release, art boards were added to Photoshop. This was a long-awaited feature that had been available in Illustrator for a long time. The November release added several improvements, including the ability to add art boards with a single click and the ability to use guides and grids to place elements within an art board.
As touch-enabled devices become more common, Adobe has added enhancements that users will appreciate. Adobe and Microsoft have both highlighted Photoshop on a Surface tablet. It's clear that touching the screen is more natural than trying to make adjustments with a mouse. Pan, zoom, and rotate are all common actions that can be accomplished easily on a touch device. (For more information see this Adobe page.)
The June release of Lightroom had some problems. Adobe apologized for modifying the import process in a way that most users detested. I saw the shortcomings, but realized that some of the changes held promise. Adobe has upheld its promise to restore the previous Import tool and it seems to work better than before. Adobe also added support for many new cameras. This is important because Lightroom and Camera Raw run in tandem and support the same raw formats.
Photoshop and most of the other Creative Cloud applications have new Start screens that display recent files, libraries, presets, and options to create a new file or open an existing file. There are also links to Adobe Stock, instructional videos, and library items.
Typeface management is important for InDesign users and also for Photoshop users. Currently is is not possible to add text to an image in Lightroom, but an image that's being worked on in Lightroom can be opened in Photoshop, where text can be added. Then the image can be returned to Lightroom. A huge array of typefaces can be used by Creative Cloud subscribers. You may note that I've used "typeface" instead of "font"; this is intentional. Typefaces (also called "type families") are collections of fonts that share an overall appearance, and are designed to be used together, such as Adobe Garamond. A font is a complete set of characters that share a common weight, width, and style, such as 10-pt Adobe Garamond Bold. Calling a typeface a font is rather like calling a tire a wheel.
Depending on which ligatures are available in a given font, several Adobe applications will display options when you select one of more letters. Ligatures are combinations of letters such as fi, fl, ff, ffi, and ffl. Some ligatures are considered standard and others are discretionary. Adobe describes the use of Caflisch Script Pro with contextual alternatives enabled: The letter pair "bl" in the word "bloom" will be combined so that the type looks more like handwriting. Discretionary ligatures include letter pairs such as ct, st, and ft.
Although the characters in ligatures appear to be joined, they remain editable don't confuse the system's spelling checker.
Other typographic substitutions involve swash glyphs, which are stylized letter forms with exaggerated flourishes. If the font you're using supports these, they will also be displayed. For example, InDesign shows a superscripted letter and a small cap letter when "h" is selected in some typefaces. This allows users to preview and apply alternate glyphs from any selected text.
Adobe is promoting Adobe Stock, which has more than 45 million "internationally curated, beautiful photos, graphics, and videos from around the world." "Curated" seems to be the word of the day for "collected". Despite the overblown terms, Adobe Stock has 1 million HD video clips and tens of millions of photos and graphics. Most Adobe desktop apps allows users to browse and purchase stock assets from the Libraries panel. Stock is an extra-cost option in that individual images and videos have their own prices.
Adobe Portfolio was added in November 2015 as a "preview". In other words, this is a new feature that's still being developed. Currently users need to request access to it, but it will be available to all Creative Clouds subscribers in 2016. According to Adobe's explanation, "When your creative work is your life’s work, nothing is more important than having a beautiful portfolio website. With Portfolio you can quickly and simply build a website to showcase your creative work." Portfolio will sync with Behance projects so that millions of viewers can discover and interact with Creative Cloud users' work.
Capture CC is now also available on Android phones in addition to Apple phones and tablets. Take a picture using the portable device and then generate a color theme or create a vector graphic from the image or even a brush that can be used in other Adobe applications. Assets created in Capture are saved in Creative Cloud Libraries, which makes them available in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, and After Effects on the desktop and also in mobile apps. Capture brings together all of the features that were previously in Brush CC, Color CC, Hue CC, and Shape CC.
You can sync and swim. CreativeSync makes color themes, images, and other components available in many of the applications. In this version, Creative Cloud Libraries can be accessed from Dreamweaver. Or start editing a photo in the new Photoshop Fix (Apple devices only now, but coming soon to Android) and then complete the process on the desktop in Photoshop CC.
Adobe Premiere Clip, previously available only on Apple devices is now available for Android phones. Note that I have explicitly excluded Android tablets. Clip makes it possible to share video projects from a mobile device or move the project to the desktop application. Select photos and videos, then let Clip automatically create a video that's synced to a soundtrack. Then select a different soundtrack or a different starting point for the existing soundtrack.
Although I've never been a fan of Illustrator, the latest version makes it possible to edit complex shapes with a new Shaper tool and adds dynamic symbols. A Publish Online feature that was added in June was enhanced in the November release. It allows users to publish interactive documents on-line.
Dreamweaver includes numerous new features that will make life easier for website designers. Because of the increasing popularity of tablet and smart-phone browsers, the ability to create responsive websites is essential. The new version of Dreamweaver makes that easy by including integration with the latest version of Bootstrap framework and there's been at least one Bootstrap update since November. New visual aids make it possible for developers to define breakpoints for different screen dimensions and organize code.
It's not uncommon for people to use a Photoshop document to illustrate what a website should look like. Until now, determining how to represent information from the PSD file in Dreamweaver was a cumbersome manual process. Now it's possible to load a Photoshop file in Dreamweaver, select a component, and then import the information into Dreamweaver.
In this case, I've selected text and I'm being offered the ability to select the cascading stylesheet information, the text itself, or the graphic. This is a huge improvement for those who design sites and want the work to move quickly.
I don't spend a lot of time with Adobe's video applications, but Premiere makes it possible to open almost any video file, add it to the timeline, and start editing. The new version expands support for UltraHD formats even beyond 8K. High dynamic range images are supported. Optical Flow Time Remapping makes it possible to generate smooth slow-motion and speed-ramp effects. But Premiere is just one of Adobe's video tools. After Effects CC is an important co-worker for both Premiere and Photoshop. The application makes it possible for users to maintain color fidelity between After Effects and Premiere Pro.
Development is continuing on the big UX project that Adobe announced in 2015. You might reasonably consider UX to be the next big step after UI. UI refers to user interface. It's important for applications, websites, and even print or electronic media because it's what the user sees and interacts with. UX refers to user experience and it encompasses even more. The UX application Adobe has been working on is called Comet.
Comet is intended to be an end-to-end solution for UX designers. It's not a modification of other Adobe tools, but a new custom-designed application for UX designers.
Although it's not yet even in beta, Comet has advanced to the point that alpha versions are nearly ready to be made available to testers outside the company so that Adobe's software engineers can get feedback on specific features. Plans call for the program to be moved to beta in early 2016 and user experience designers can complete an Adobe questionnaire to gain access to Comet while it's still in development. The application form was still closed when I prepared this report, so if you're interested follow Comet on Twitter.
Initially Comet will be released for Macs, but will come to Windows systems later. This is because Comet is still going through fast iteration cycles and it's faster to perform that kind of work on a single platform, make sure it's working the way users want it to, and then port it to another platforms. Software design involves a series of advances and bug fixes; there's no question that working on just a single platform speeds the process.
If you have an older version of Windows, the end has come or is quickly approaching. Mainstream support and extended support have already ended for XP. Mainstream support ended for Vista in 2012 and mainstream support ended for Windows 7 a year ago (13 January 2015). What does this mean?
It's important to understand what mainstream support and extended support refer to.
If you're still using an old version of Internet Explorer, time is up. Microsoft has ended support for all Internet Explorer versions earlier than IE 11. Although Edge replaces Internet Explorer on Windows 10, IE 11 will continue to be supported. Edge is not available for earlier version of Windows. Microsoft says that users who want to continue using Internet Explorer should immediately upgrade the browser to version 11.
Maintaining backward compatibility seemed like a good idea, but it has hampered development and it's undoubtedly one of the reasons that Microsoft decided to create a new browser for Windows 10. Support for IE versions up to and including 10 ended on 12 January 2016.
Sort of. If you have Vista or Windows Server 2008, IE 9 will continue to be supported. IE 10 will be supported on Windows Server 2012. That's because these versions of the operating system cannot be updated to IE 11.
What nasties are coming your way this year? The threat landscape changes continuously and never for the better. Last year just about every type of business or government agency suffered data losses. The folks at iSheriff (which I will style as "ISheriff" from this point forward because I consider the lower case "i" to be both silly and pretentious) have a list of what they consider will be the 5 biggest threats in 2016.
ISheriff is a security platform used large organizations. The software as a service application includes versions for notebook computers, tablets, servers, point of sale devices, industrial equipment, and Internet of Things technologies.
The company says point-of-sale devices will be at increased risk this year, so we should expect more reports of credit card information being stolen in bulk. Lax security configurations combined with weak passwords and third-party access vulnerabilities will combine with the roll-out of new credit card terminals that read cards with embedded security chips. Despite the enhanced security of the cards themselves, it's likely that crooks will still find ways to get your data into their computers.
The increasing use of bring your own device (BYOD) philosophies in companies is an open invitation to thieves if the company has substandard security. Security managers may understand the risks, but sometimes are stymied by not having sufficient budgets to secure the network and all endpoints. Locking a system down too tightly reduces employee efficiency, but leaving too much of the system exposed can be far worse.
Big data breaches will continue to make headlines, but even smaller attacks can be devastating. Crooks are crooks because they want to get money the easy way. As a result, they'll take the easiest path to data. Criminals work out functional techniques and "earn" cash by attacking smaller business as they work up to enterprise operations.
Ransomware schemes are easier than ever. All a crook has to do is spend a bit of money to buy the malware that encrypts unfortunate users' hard drives, sit back, and wait for the cash to roll in. The FBI received nearly 1000 CryptoWall reports between April 2014 and mid 2015. That's believed to be just a small number of people who were victimized. Many simply paid the ransom and never reported the event.
On the plus side, ISheriff says that cloud-based security services will lead to better integration that will give IT professionals a better view of their networks.
In short, the forecast is for dangerous conditions with an increasing likelihood of data theft.
Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi says that Windows 10 has been activated on more than 200 million computers. More than 40% of the activations occurred since the end of November 2015 and Mehdi says the adoption rate "continues to be on the fastest growth trajectory of any version of Windows." Activations have outpaced Windows 7 by about 140% and the largely ignored Windows 8 by nearly 400%.
The timing clearly indicates that registration was helped by people who bought new computers as gifts or, for tax reasons, before the end of the year.
"We are also seeing accelerating and unprecedented demand for Windows 10 among enterprise and education customers." Mehdi said. More than three quarters of Microsoft's enterprise customers are in active pilots of Windows 10.
The rate of adoption is actually running a bit beyond Microsoft's projections and Windows 10 is replacing previous versions of Windows sooner than expected, particularly in the enterprise environment. Instead of leveling off after the first wave of early adopters, the trend is actually accelerating.
Microsoft can track adoptions based solely on activations, but it goes somewhat beyond that. Every time you start a Windows 10 computer, tablet, or phone, the operating system checks in with Microsoft. During the time the computer is on, it can report problems the operating system has encountered to Microsoft so that software engineers can get a head start on finding a solution.
