My friends at CreativePro Magazine (formerly InDesign Magazine) asked me to comment on the major Adobe Creative Cloud announcements and software upgrades at the Adobe MAX conference in October 2021. I wrote up my thoughts in the article Adobe MAX 2021: Larger Forces at Work for the December 2021 issue. Some new features can seem puzzling…why is it a priority to create a web browser version of Photoshop, over other potential new features? After summarizing upgrades to individual applications, I talk about some of the higher-level goals at Adobe that make it easier to understand those changes across the entire Creative Cloud suite.

Every autumn, the Adobe MAX conference brings a wave of major upgrades across Creative Cloud products and services. Adobe then supports the new releases on the conference side, with three days of sessions that are educational, inspirational, and of course promotional.

The traditional way to process Adobe MAX is to look for the list of what’s changed in your favorite application, such as Photoshop. Increasingly, it’s just as important to step back and look at where Adobe is steering Creative Cloud as a whole, because the implications resonate through nearly all Creative Cloud desk-top and mobile apps, typically affecting the ones you use the most.

To read my analysis of the October 2021 Creative Cloud releases, click the link below to download it as a free PDF excerpt from issue 2 of CreativePro Magazine (December 2021). CreativePro Magazine is published only in Portable Document Format.

Want to read the rest of the issue? All CreativePro Magazine issues are available as a benefit of a paid CreativePro Professional membership, which may interest you if you want to advance your Adobe Creative Cloud skills with the help of some of the most knowledgeable users in the industry. CreativePro Professional members can also read the full article when signed into the CreativePro website: Adobe MAX 2021: Larger Forces at Work

Filled with practical, real-world tutorials written by experts, CreativePro Magazine provides independent, valuable insights into how to work more efficiently and design more effectively. Each issue offers tutorials, reviews, news, and inspirational content from five main subjects: Design, Photo, Illustration, Presentation, and InDesign. You can download a free trial issue.

Also: 75 InDesign tips for you

By the way, I also contributed a tip to the October 2021 issue of InDesign Magazine, All-Star Tips. My tip shows you how to create Photoshop-like visual effects or even basic image corrections using blend modes in InDesign. This was issue 150, the last issue of InDesign Magazine before it was reborn with its expanded scope as CreativePro Magazine, so the editors marked the occasion by publishing 75 InDesign tips by many of the magazine’s authors (the “all-stars” in the title).