10 reasons to switch to Adobe Creative Cloud from Creative Suite

Lately, I have been very taken back at how many people in the creative space who use Adobe products have not made the switch or are even up to date on what Adobe has been up to in the past 3–4 years in the form of the Creative Cloud. Many people who I speak with, including prospective employers are still used to using the Creative Suite and have no idea of many of the new and innovating products and features that would be invaluable to them as well as save them LOADS of time on projects for their clients.

I wanted to write this article to really go over some of the main highlights of the CC (Creative Cloud) and why many creatives should consider making the switch.

1. Creative Cloud Libraries

This feature alone is reason enough to make the switch to CC and I can make an article with this feature alone. So let’s break down CC Libraries and what this brings to the creative workflow.

The primary focus of CC Libraries is having the ability to store any of your creative assets, such as color swatches, images, vectors, and even Character Styles to the cloud for use across a variety of programs. Whats great about having your files inside of the Creative Cloud is that you are able to make changes to them, save them, and have the changes made across all of the applications that they appear in by re-syncing to the cloud.

Earlier this year, Adobe made included a huge addition to CC Libraries, and that came in the form of allowing users to search through the Adobe Stock Library from within CC Libraries, allowing you to preview stock photos in your application and decide whether or not to purchase the image(s) seamlessly without once having to go into your web browser.

2. Exclusive Creative Cloud apps

There many applications that have spawned since Adobe dropped the Creative Suite and many are invaluable now and extremely innovative, allowing for a much more productive and time-saving workflow. Some of the most powerful and useful applications that are exclusive to CC users are Muse, Experience Design, and Animate.

Adobe Muse has become a favorite app for me and my projects as it allows visual designers to take their vision for responsive website designs and bring them to life without having a strong background in coding and allowing. Experience Design changes the landscape for UX designers, giving them an all in one wire-framing and prototyping platform to bring their creations to life to not only view, but test before sending off to app developers to launch. Adobe Animate is fairly new and was previously Adobe Flash Professional. This platform is great for designers, illustrators, and animators, allowing them to create animations for many different web platforms.

3. Mobile application workflow

Lately I have been taking huge advantage of some of the great applications available to CC members which allow for a great connected workflow away from the desktop or laptop.

There are a lot of great apps available such as Adobe Comp CC, Capture, and Spark. Comp CC allows you to make gestures to create shapes, place holder boxes, and text boxes to create your own layouts, mock-ups, and wireframes on the go on either your phone or tablet. Capture allows you to use your smartphone to capture swatch themes, patterns, and even brushes that catch your eye when you are out and about. Spark is one of the newer applications that is pretty powerful in letting users easily make and edit video on the go and even make beautiful customized social media posts.

These and other Creative Cloud applications also allow you to utilize the assets that are already stored from within your libraries and save them back for use when you are back at your desktop or laptop.

4. Typekit

Here’s another game changer! Since Adobe’s purchase of Typekit in 2011, Adobe has made an enormous leap in allowing creatives to utilize the service with their Creative Cloud membership to search and use thousands of fonts from the foundry, all with commercial licences included and allowing you to use them in any client projects. In addition, it allows users to search and use web safe fonts for website designs.

5. Adobe Portfolio

Included with all Creative Cloud plans is an Adobe Portfolio website that members can take advantage of to create beautiful and responsive sites hosted by adobe with their own .com URL. Within this platform, you can show forth not only your portfolio, but also your blog or any information about you that you’d like others to be able to view online.

6. Community collaborations

For creative teams, it is ideal for every member to be on the same page with their team projects and Creative Cloud allows for great tools so that assets, colors, layouts, and entire libraries can be shared with one another in a simplified collaborative environment through Private Creative Cloud Library folders.

7. Backwards compatible down to CS3

I think some people may fear that making the switch to CC could mean that some of their previous files inside of the Creative Suite would not be recognized and carried over to the Creative Cloud. This is a concern that Adobe has already addressed in allowing all of their previous applications, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to be backwards compatible all the way down to CS3, and then up-saved (made up word :))to CC.

8. Crash recovery

The most frustrating thing to happen when using the many creative apps is to have your computer suddenly and crash on you and lose not only your progress, but time that you simply can’t get back. It’s a heart breaking experience and it is one that Adobe has addressed in many of their most recent updates, allowing all (if not, the majority) of your progress to be recovered (irregardless of if you saved right before the crash) after a surprise crash or shutdown.

I actually just added this 9th reason yesterday after my Adobe Muse crashed and was quickly reminded that I didn’t have anything to worry about when shortly after, I was given the “Recovery” message.

9. Constant updates to software features.

In my previous points, I’ve listed many applications that you may or may not have heard of or used and whats great about these and the more well known software, is that Adobe is constantly bringing in new features to allow for a greater experience or simply to save time. Some great features to older applications include the addition of Artboards in Photoshop, GPU Performance in Illustrator, and EPUB in InDesign which, depending on how you use these platforms, can fundamentally change your creative workflow.

10. Great pricing models for what is included

The pricing model with the Creative Cloud is something that many people don’t find appealing and I honestly cannot understand how it can be debatable (of course I understand if there is a harsh financial struggle that you may be going through) considering that with the most expensive route to go with, ($52.99 per month) it includes EVERY application, including some that are no longer supported. If you are freelancing on the side or full-time, then if you are pricing yourself effectively you shouldn’t have any problem with the commitment, as one client project should more than take care of it. Also, If you are in school, Adobe has great teacher and student discounts to take advantage of for all of their packages.

When debating over the value of switching to the Creative Cloud, I really think that you have to consider what the alternative looks like going forward and consider all of the value that you are losing out on by holding onto outdated software. Sure your CS6, CS5, or older may be getting the job done for you at the moment, but CC offers far more features that will help you grow more and stay up to date with the current trends in the creative industries and I would like to think that creatives would want to continually grow in their craft while offering more in the way of services to the clients that they work with.

I feel that the greatest value found in the Creative Cloud is simply, saving time and working smarter. Time especially, since it is something that none of us can get back or CMD/CTR+Z :)

It would be great to hear from you and what your take is on the Creative Cloud in the comments below and if you enjoyed reading and gained value from this, please hit that recommend HEART below for others to discover.

Thanks for Reading!