Industry News
Adobe is bringing some of its most-used features into a free app that’s designed to help inexperienced users create social media graphics and videos. On Monday, Dec. 13, Adobe launched Creative Cloud Express, a free app and web-browser-based program designed for quickly creating photos, videos, GIFs and other graphics. Creative Cloud Express replaces Adobe Spark, while adding a few new tools.
Like Spark, Creative Cloud Express is designed for well, non-designers. Adobe says the program is made for anyone from small business owners (including photographers) creating social media posts, to students working on projects. The program helps design anything from a printed menu to a video, from an Instagram post to a Story, by starting from a template. These templates can then be customized and adjusted from a variety of different tools.
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But, besides offering a jump start on social media posts, the program also simplifies a few other common tasks, including removing the background from a photo and stitching movie clips together. Photoshop’s relatively new subject detection pops up here in Express’ Quick Actions, where it will automatically remove the background from a photo. When a template uses a certain photo effect, that effect will also apply to the user’s uploaded photo, including background removal. Express’ Quick Actions is also a way to quickly resize an image without Photoshop.
Adobe says that besides beginners, Express is also made for those experienced with other programs that need to tackle a project quickly. For example, Adobe says that Premiere Pro users can quickly make a YouTube thumbnail in Express.
Express also allows users to create a library of features for their brand. The app will save a business’ color schemes and logo so they can easily be re-used on other projects.
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Express is more of a revamp on Spark than something entirely new. But, Adobe is working on adding another major feature to the program — social media scheduling. Adobe is currently in talks to acquire ContentCal, a program for scheduling social media posts. The company says that features from ContentCal will be integrated into Express “soon.”
Like Spark, Adobe Creative Cloud Express is free to use. Some assets and templates, however, are premium. Subscribers to a Creative Cloud single app plan and the All Apps plan already have access to those premium assets. Other users can unlock the extras as well as get Photoshop Express and Premiere Rush for about $10 a month or $100 for an annual subscription.
The new Creative Cloud Express is available without a download at express.adobe.com, or on the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft stores.