A Beginner's Guide to Adobe Creative Cloud: The Creator's Ultimate Toolkit

Adobe Creative Cloud is a behemoth suite of more than 20 apps and services employed by professionals and enthusiasts alike for graphic design, video, web development, photography, and more. 

Key Creative Cloud Apps and Their Uses

We can categorize the apps into their primary use to simplify them.

For Photography:

Photoshop: The globally acclaimed software for editing, compositing, and making lovely images, graphics, and art.

Lightroom: Edit, organize, store, and share your photos anywhere.

Lightroom Classic: A desktop-oriented version for powerful and accurate photo editing.

For Design, Graphics & Publishing:

Illustrator: Produce amazing vector graphics and illustrations that can be resized to any extent.

InDesign: Layout and design pages for print and digital publications such as magazines, books, and brochures.

Acrobat Pro: The end-to-end PDF solution for creating, editing, signing, and handling documents.

Adobe XD: Design, prototype, and share compelling user experiences for websites and mobile apps.

Fresco: A standalone app for digital painting and drawing that mimics the natural feel.

Spark: Rapidly design social graphics, web pages, and short video narratives in minutes.

For Video, Audio & Motion Graphics:

Premiere Pro: Industry-standard timeline-based video editing tool for film and video.

After Effects: Insert cinematic visual effects and motion graphics into your videos.

Audition: Powerful tool for recording, mixing, and restoring audio.

Premiere Rush: An easy, one-stop application to make and publish online videos in a hurry.

Character Animator: Bring your 2D characters to life in real-time with your own movements and expressions.

Media Encoder: A versatile tool to export video files for nearly any screen or format.

For 3D and AR:

Substance: The industry-leading suite for 3D painting and texturing.

Dimension: Design photorealistic 3D images for branding, product photography, and package design.

Fuse: Design personalized 3D characters for your projects.

Workflow & Utility Apps:

Bridge: A strong creative asset manager that allows you to preview, arrange, and modify your documents in a single location.

InCopy: Enables writers and editors to edit text while designers edit the layout in InDesign at the same time.

Dreamweaver: Design and build contemporary, responsive web pages.

Animate: Create interactive vector animations for games, applications, and the web.

Creative Suite (CS) vs. Creative Cloud (CC): What's the Difference?

You might've noticed older Adobe programs with "CS" in the title (such as Photoshop CS6). Know the difference.

CS (Creative Suite): That was Adobe's old system. You'd purchase a particular version of the software (say, CS4, CS5, CS6) for a one-time fee. You owned that version for life, but to access new features, you'd need to purchase the next major release.

CC (Creative Cloud): The new, subscription-only model. You pay a monthly or yearly fee for access to the complete set of Adobe software and services.

Why is CC the norm now?

With Creative Cloud, you are always working with the latest versions of the apps. You receive all new features immediately when they are released, along with cloud storage and improved collaboration tools. For any creative project nowadays, employing Creative Cloud (CC) is the choice that's advisable.