Attn CS6 Users: The New Creative Cloud Apps Are Here!

After all the build up from the past few months (including some of our own) the Adobe Creative Cloud apps are now available for download.

As previously mentioned, these essentially make up the new Adobe Creative Suite, replacing all Adobe applications with their new Creative Cloud (or CC) counterparts. This is naturally only for those who have made the switch to the Creative Cloud.

A couple of things before updating though. First, don’t delete your current CS6 Apps until after you have installed the new CC versions of the apps. When installing the new versions, they’ll ask you if you want to import your settings and plugins from the older versions. Once you say yes, they import your settings automatically.  This can save you some time and potential frustration. After you’ve imported your setting and plugins, you should be able to delete the CS6 versions of the apps from your machine with no problems.

Second, the process for updating all of your apps is a little tricky, as they are a tad hidden. When going to your program page, the new CC apps are located just beneath your existing apps. You may just have to scroll down a bit to see them depending on how many apps you have installed.

So, with all that out of the way, what’s new?  Check out some of our videos from Adobe’s press event in San Jose back in March and interviews with Steve Ford of After Effects and Mitch Wood who break it all down:

From Adobe’s 6/17/2013 Press Release:

We couldn’t be more pleased to announce that our new family of Creative Cloud desktop apps, and many of the powerful publishing and collaborative features that we announced at Adobe MAX in May, are now available. These include:

• Hundreds of new features in new versions of the apps you love, including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Adobe Muse CC, Dreamweaver CC, Edge Animate CC, Adobe Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, and more. Your Creative Cloud membership includes more than 30 tools and services that enable professional-grade content creation and delivery across print, web, mobile apps, video and photography.

• The new Creative Cloud app for your desktop, which keeps your entire creative world in sync and organized. Download and manage the latest product updates, keep tabs on your work and your followers on Behance, and more – all right from your desktop.

• The ability to sync your application settings to Creative Cloud. Whether you use a Mac or PC —or both! — you can synchronize your workspace settings — including things like preferences, presets, brushes, and libraries. No more tedious fussing with your apps on a new computer. Just log in, sync, and get back to work.

• Integration with Behance, the world’s leading creative community.  Members are able to publish their portfolios, follow others, publish work-in-progress from within a growing number of CC apps, and solicit feedback from a worldwide community of over 1.4 million creatives. And now, stay connected with the world’s best creative work with the Behance mobile app for iOS.

• A Behance Prosite for Creative Cloud member. Create a personalized, professional looking, dynamic web site in minutes to show off your work and build your brand.

• The new Adobe Kuler iPhone app, so you can share your color themes and explore thousands of others available on the Kuler website. Sync your favorite themes, and they’ll be accessible immediately in Illustrator CC. We’ll be rolling out support for synced color themes in other CC apps later this year.

• The updated Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition that extends InDesign CC and allows you to create iPad apps without writing code.

• Over 200 new tutorials added to Creative Cloud Learn to help customers get up and running quickly.  And the all new Creative Voices videos that give you a glimpse into the lives of some of the most creative minds in the world.

Also of note from their press release is one of the best features of the new Creative Cloud update: updates as they happen. No more waiting for new features, or major functionality updates. They’ll be made ready to you in but a moment after release. From Adobe’s release:

One of the advantages of being a Creative Cloud member is that you get updates and new features as soon as they’re ready. We already have the next batch lined up and you will be seeing the following new features and functionality as soon as they are ready:

• File syncing on the desktop, including file versioning and private folder sharing. Customers may continue to upload and share files via the browser, with desktop functionality and more features coming soon. Private folders will let you share just the files you want in the cloud, and with versioning, every layer will be maintained and past versions will be saved. Comments on versions and invitations to join shared folders will appear in your activity stream in the Creative Cloud desktop app.

• Typekit fonts on your desktop. Quickly find the perfect fonts in the growing Adobe Typekit library, sync them to your computer, and have them immediately available for use in any desktop application. Full Creative Cloud members will soon have access to over 700 fonts, installed with a single click.

• An exciting new technology in Photoshop which we demonstrated at our MAX conference, that automatically sizes, crops, and creates image assets for the web from a document’s layers. This makes it significantly easier to go from static visual design to responsive layouts using HTML5 and CSS.

• A Creative Cloud app for iOS to keep your entire creative world in sync and organized – on the go.

You can find out more at blogs.adobe.com