Featured video: Adobe Touch Apps

Transcript

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JULIE CAMPAGNA: Hi, I'm Julie Campagna, Managing Editor of Inspire Magazine. Last week Adobe released six Touch Apps to the Marketplace. In this video we're going to chat with David Macy, a product manager for Touch Apps. Then we're going to catch up with Gabriel Campbell. He's going to show us some of what these apps can do.

So David, why is Adobe focusing on Touch Apps?

DAVID MACY: We've been doing a lot of research where we go and visit people in the studios or we bring them into Adobe to talk to them. We heard overwhelmingly that designers want to be able to use tablets as part of their creative workflow. This is an early stage of seeing what we can do that fits well into pockets of the creative workflow that we haven't really filled with other applications on the desktop.

JULIE: How will people integrate the Adobe Creative Suite software with what they create on the Touch Apps?

DAVID: One of the most important parts of this workflow is the Adobe Creative Cloud. The Creative Cloud sits between the Touch Apps and the desktop. What's really unique about the Creative Cloud is the understanding of these Creative Suite file formats, both going from the Touch Apps to the desktop and the other way around.

I can upload a Photoshop file to the Creative Cloud and it will see that it's a PSD, it will be able to render it and even render individual layers and be able to flip on and off layers. Same thing for InDesign files, Illustrator files and PDF files. This understanding of these Creative Suite file formats is what's unique and we'll be adding other file formats in the future.

JULIE: Now, the Touch Apps are just the first offering as part of the Creative Cloud - what's next?

DAVID: We actually announced the Creative Cloud membership, which will be a $49-a-month membership, which will give people access to not only the Touch Apps but also the Creative Suite applications like Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, etcetera. There will be a number of cloud-based services that go along with that.

The initial Cloud-based services are the integrations with the Touch Apps. That's really a beta release right now. We're going to be announcing more functionality of the Creative Cloud in the months to come.

JULIE: Last question. You mention that these apps are now available for Android tablets - when will they be available for iOS?

DAVID: So Adobe Ideas is already available for iOS. It’s been in the market for about a year and a half. And the rest of the apps, we’re working on them. You should look for an announcement from Adobe about iOS availability in early 2012.

JULIE: Great. Now, we're going to go track down Gabriel Campbell to see what some of these Touch Apps can do.

JULIE: Gabriel, we just released Touch Apps, their getting outstanding reviews in the Marketplace. But I would like you to provide a snapshot of each of the applications so we can get an idea of how they work. Note, this is going to be a snapshot, but take it away.

GABRIEL CAMPBELL: Sure. I'd love to. The first app is Adobe Ideas. It's great to start with that one because a lot of times you start with an idea. This is a great app for capturing those ideas and sketching them out.

The great thing about it is that once they're finished, I can bring this into a vector app like Illustrator and continue to edit these paths.

JULIE: How much of the work in this was done with the Touch App versus within Illustrator?

GABRIEL: For this specific piece, all of the drawing here was done in Ideas. Then some of these swoopy shapes were done in Illustrator after the fact.

JULIE: Great.

GABRIEL: Here's an app that I really like. It's Adobe Debut. Debut is great for bringing in high-resolution renditions of your artwork and then presenting it to clients. How cool is it to walk in to a client meeting and show everything on a tablet? The great thing about it, too, is that it's got a markup tool, which allows creative professionals to capture feedback.

This one's my favorite, this is Kuler. This is a great and very, very social app for creating and sharing color themes. The fun thing is to be able to just grab an image and extract colors from it. Then you can also continue to edit and tweak it as long as you want.

Another really great design app is Adobe Collage. This is great for designers who want to capture inspiration. Very easily they can bring in photos, text, color swatches and also draw and create a mood board that really gets to the heart of where they want to take their design.

Then PS Touch, Photoshop. Everybody knows Photoshop, but now it's on the tablet. It's got some great tools, it's got layers, selections, blending modes and filters. It's a very, very powerful app.

All right. Then the last app here we have is Proto. I saved this one for the last because it's got some really cool technology under the hood. I wanted to show it to you here.

This is Proto. I've got a new wire frame here. I'm going to adjust the number of columns and change up the grid here and go ahead and tap on "Create".

So, I've got this interface here and with this pen selected, I could just very easily draw with my finger an element and Proto changes it into a div. This is a header box here, I can move this up on the grid to exactly where I want it. A lot of times websites have their name up at the top, so I can drag my finger really easily and create some text, I can create an image, placeholder video.

Then this one is fun, this is the menu. Just really easily I can drag my fingers on there and it creates a menu. I can select that and move it up where I want to. I can make it span the entire width. Then I can also increase the number of buttons in that menu.

Just in a matter of minutes I have mocked up what this website might look like. Then with the Creative Cloud, it's super easy to get it on your desktop and bring it into a program like Dreamweaver and continue editing that HTML and get a functioning website within minutes.

JULIE: Minutes?

GABRIEL: Yeah. You bring this in, you put a stylesheet on it, and you've got a website.

JULIE: I got to see this myself. Let's go to the desktop.

GABRIEL: All right. I'll show you.

JULIE: What happens now?

GABRIEL: Here's the file that I created. I'm just going to choose "Upload to Creative Cloud." It's actually pretty quick.

JULIE: That is fast.

GABRIEL: You're going to see it pop up right there. We're going to go ahead and download it. Then I'm going to switch over to Dreamweaver, then go ahead and open that HTML file.

Now you see the prototype I created in Proto. I'm going to navigate to this Citrus Café stylesheet. There you go. It's attached and if we go ahead and view it in the browser you can see really quickly we've go rollovers, we've got styled text, we've got images and video.

JULIE: I'm pleasantly surprised. I really was expecting a little smoke and mirrors.

GABRIEL: Actually, aside from that CSS file that I already had in existence, it just shows you how quickly you can go from sketched prototype to finished website.

JULIE: Great. Well, thanks so much for chatting with us today, Gabriel.

GABRIEL: You're welcome. My pleasure.

JULIE: If you want to learn more about Adobe Touch Apps visit adobe.com/touchapps If you're just ready to download them today they're also available in the Android Marketplace. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this edition of Inspire Magazine.

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