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Adobe’s Creative Cloud 2015 milestone updates for iOS, Android and Desktop!


Finally acknowledging the clamor from Android users — Adobe has launched four Android apps (available in Google Play store). These four Creative Cloud apps, along with a brand new micro-stock photo service (Adobe Stock), a video-focused iOS app (Hue CC) and a bunch of updates to Creative Cloud’s desktop apps mark Adobe’s milestone updates for this year.

Along with Photoshop Mix, Adobe’s self-styled “capture apps” — Color CC, Brush CC and Shape CC – are now available for Android.

The compositing app – Photoshop Mix – enables you to combine images (mask & overlay images on top of the other), change colors and share composites on social networks. The app also allows photos to the send to the desktop Photoshop CC for additional work.

  
  
 


For use in Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop, Color CC will now let you extract colors from images and create themes in scenes. Brush CC lets you convert photographs or graphics into custom brushes for use in Adobe Photoshop CC or Illustrator CC. In Adobe Illustrator CC or Adobe Photoshop CC Shape CC lets you capture and transform images into vector graphics/illustrations. Adobe’s video-focused iOS app is Hue CC, letting you create custom filters and looks from photos you have captured, for use in Adobe’s video apps, Premiere Pro, Premiere Clip and After Effects CC.

 


The most noteworthy addition to the Creative Cloud suite is Adobe Stock. With the acquisition of Fotolia Abode offers microstock photos to Creative Cloud subscribers. Adobe Stock functions as a standalone service as well. The service aims to make to easier for people already using Adobe's creative apps to find stock images.



For existing Creative Cloud subscribers Adobe Stock plans start at $29.99/month for 10 images and $49.99/month for non-subscribers. Individual photos may be licensed at $9.99 each.
Adobe's Creative Cloud suite of desktops apps – Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects, and Premiere Pro, are getting updates and new features. The new "dehaze" tool in Photoshop and Lightroom takes out haze from landscapes images and underwater images.

The Creative Cloud updates are available for subscribers now. Although Adobe's mobile apps are free and available to anyone, whether or not they are members of the Creative Cloud subscription service, to take full advantage of the workflows between mobile and desktop apps, subscription will be necessary.

Private photo sharing app 'Moments' from Facebook


Will Ruben, Facebook’s Product Manager for Moments say their goal with the app was to create a very private space for groups of friends to share photos. Gatherings, trips, events, meets etc. are now captured in everyone’s cell phones; it however becomes difficult to sort them and moreover to share it with everybody individually. Photos uploaded on social websites need not have the most appropriate audience especially for all your private moments and addressing this issue is the new standalone app – Moments.



Moments keeps the photos organized on your phone by grouping photos together based on who are there in them and when they were taken. The app uses face recognition technology, much like ‘tagging’ on Facebook. Therefore syncing photos with the app makes it easier for you to store them and share it with groups of friends and even take photos you don’t have from them. It is possible to share photos with friends by syncing the same with them and they can sync photos with you as well.

Moments app doubles as a good backup of all your photographs with a limitless storage option, whether you have the originals photos on your phone or not! Ruben also says that the images are optimized for speed and quality of the captured moments, although the full resolution of the image will be compromised. Moments will let you however recover old photos from friends that you would have otherwise never discovered.
A Creative Labs’ app – Moments is now available on iOS and Android in the US. Over time the app will be available in many more countries. 


Google I/O 2015: New Photos App Offers Unlimited Photo and Video Storage

The Photos App from Google, which was so far integrated within Google+, is revamped and now available with some interesting features – announced Google in I/O 2015 developers conference. The revamped Photos app will be available for Android, iOS as well as the web. A magnificent feature of Google Photos is having the ability to support unlimited photos and videos. However, the image resolution is limited to 16 megapixels and video resolution is limited to 1080p videos, which is good enough for most mobile and amateur photographers out there.



With unlimited storage for both photos and videos, Google Photos may just make every other photo storage service, which charges users after a fixed storage limit, redundant.
Google Photos will continue to use auto-backup feature and you can store all your photos and videos which can be accessed across devices. Even though it is exposed to some level of compression, Google claims that images have a print-quality resolution. You can store up to 15GB original size images for free.
To make photo search easier, Google has added a visual search feature that will let you search photos by people and places and random things that may be present in the image. For instance, you can search images which have say, ‘the skyline’ or images shot in ‘Goa’ and so on. The auto-grouping is private by default. You can also use pinch to zoom gesture to go from a single image to images by the week or month, a feature present of Apple’s Photo app as well.
The Auto-awesome feature, present in the Google+, has been carried forward to Google Photos. This will let the app create automatic interactive stories, montage movies, GIF animations from a burst of images, collages and more. You also get the option to share it or edit it or delete it. Photo editing options which were present with the previous variation of Photos will also be present on the Photos app. Editing tools like filters, adjust colors, change tone maps and so on are also available with Google Photos.
The most essential thing in the Photos app is improvements in sharing photos. The app lets you select images in a group by just swiping over them. When sharing images to friends, they will receive a web link from where they can view or download the images you share. This bypasses the need for the recipient to have the Google Photos app installed on his or her phone.

Android M Developer Preview Out Now




Google I/O 2015 created quite the buzz expected! The annual developers’ meet took place in San Francisco. In the keynote, Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai announced that HBO Now is on the Play Store and soon enough ‎VP of Engineering Dave Burke was brought to speak on Android M. The successor of Lollipop has improved stability and usability. The shift will be more in quality than the look of the platform! Less intimidating App Permissions, battery life, links between apps and Chrome Custom Tabs are a few improvements that come with the latest operating system. Android M will be made available for users in Q3 2015. However app developers may get the prerelease version 
here!

Google I/O 2015: Maps to Bring Offline Search and Navigation

Just like Google has done with YouTube, you will soon be able to take offline Maps search and navigation with you. Google has announced in the 2015 I/O developers conference that they are going to work on Offline Maps and turn-by-turn navigation. Google hasn’t given an exact date as to when this feature will begin working on Maps.



You will get the turn by turn voice navigation even with the offline Maps, stated Google. This is particularly relevant in markets like India where cellular connectivity may not always be speedy at all times while driving.

Offline maps navigation will certainly help out people in saving up on data charges when they are out and about. However, keep in mind that offline maps with turn-by-turn navigation will surely take up significant space on your storage.