Transforming design through mobile
Yesterday, Adobe announced that it was releasing a new mobile app that’s meant as a game changer for designers all across the world. Maybe Adobe finally caught on to the fact that designers have active lives that involve traveling for meetings and networking, or maybe it just wants to help designers avoid the negative health effects of too much sitting. In either case, Adobe released Adobe Comp CC, which is a free productivity app that lets users mock up graphics, typefaces and user interfaces.

Touchscreen controls make designing intuitive
The mobile app’s easy-to-use, touchscreen controls make all the difference in the world. Tactile and intuitive, they offer users a level of instant gratification that has been a foreign concept on the Adobe desktop versions of Photoshop and Illustrator. With instant gratification comes increased productivity and efficiency. Picture this: you need to draw a circle for a wireframe, yet your finger isn’t the steadiest in the world, so your circle becomes a rough-shaped circle. The app intelligently and automatically improves this to a perfect circle. You have further options, too: You can stretch the circle to customize it as you want for your design needs, with just a simple tap. When you draw three, basic lines beside the circle, you’re looking at a handy placeholder for text as well.

Extra features sweeten the deal
Yet that’s not all. Additional features take this mobile app from good to great. A slider allows designers to swiftly move through layers; this replaces the more unwieldy outline format that’s prevalent on Adobe’s desktop versions. A simple three-finger swipe—think your iMac’s touchpad, here—lets you quickly see the whole history of your entire composition. Then there’s also the Creative Cloud Market. It features all kinds of frequently necessary graphics, such as iOS navigation UI, that you can incorporate into your creations. This frees you up to grab all kinds of required media quickly without doing a Google search. (As of the time of publication, the Market is free, yet this is always subject to change.) While all this sounds very promising, the innovation doesn’t stop there. Perhaps the mobile app’s most attractive hook is its connectivity, which couldn’t be more important these days with workflows occurring both on desktop and mobile.Introducing the 360-degree workflow and CDF
Never before attempted, Adobe will introduce something called the “360-degree Workflow” later in 2015. This will empower designers to smoothly use media from app to app without missing a beat. To achieve this, Adobe created a file type named Compound Document Format or CDF. CDF is a universal language that both Adobe’s desktop and mobile apps share. Here’s what this means for designers: you can easily export anything you create in the mobile app to either Photoshop or Illustrator on your desktop. Your creation will appear as a vector file, complete with intact layers and 1:1 pixel accuracy. Finally, you’ll also be able to import files in all third party-supported Creative Cloud apps.
User response
So how will this ambitious mobile project by Adobe be received by the design community? It’s much too early to tell, of course, but early signs are indeed promising. Adobe Comp CC has already netted a perfect, five-star score from user reviews and ratings on iTunes. Not bad for an app that’s barely been available for 24 hours. Earlier this year, we told you about Serif’s push to take market share away from Photoshop by releasing a graphics editor to directly compete against Photoshop. With Adobe’s very ambitious objective to make Photoshop easier than ever to use and its app-integration plans, however, Adobe won’t be going anywhere for quite a while.Marc Schenker
Marc’s a copywriter who covers design news for Web Designer Depot. Find out more about him at thegloriouscompanyltd.com.
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