Adobe’s Creative Cloud is a collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps and services for photography, design, video, web, UX and more. Explore your creativity with software like Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Voted #1 in graphic design software.
Pros:
- Industry-standard and highly recommended by creative experts.
- Complete package with more than 20+ creative apps.
- Free trial available. No credit card needed.
Cons:
- Only available for a monthly or annual subscription.
- Less suitable for beginner or amateur use due to the relatively high cost.
More About Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud Reviews
Find out what each expert had to say about Adobe Creative Cloud.
Charlie Wright
Jaclyn Hoffman
✓ Adobe Creative Suite
As a designer, my preferred software is the most current Adobe Creative Suite (2020).
Between Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, each of these softwares serves a different yet essential purpose for graphic designers.
For example, Illustrator, which is a vector-based software, is an amazing tool for creating design elements such as logos and drawings.
InDesign is the best layout software. If I am building a page for both print and digital media that is composed of text and images, I will always turn to InDesign.
Photoshop is probably the most commonly known Adobe design tool, as it is extremely diverse, and has so many helpful features.
Aside from the obvious photo editing capabilities, at Falcon Marketing we use Photoshop for designing full websites. Each page of the site is mocked up in Photoshop, and then the Photoshop files are used to develop the code to build pixel perfect websites.
Farhan Karim
Today, if you want to get a cool photo, you really should not only make the best shot itself but process it, apply some filters and get the right result. Modern photo editing software allows you to change the colours, retouch faces, swap backgrounds, delete unwanted objects. Here is my top 3 pick of photo editing soft:
✓ Adobe Lightroom
Adobe is one of the biggest names in photo editing and in software in general. Lightroom is a perfect tool for any enthusiast. It allows you to take photos from your phone or camera, edit them on your PC or smartphone, or maybe both. It’s a cross-platform app with a simple and intuitive interface.
Lightroom is not only about beautiful presets but also it allows you to do some manual editing to get the best result.
Also, it has a smart catalogue tool that uses AI. It gives your photos handy tags and allows you to keep them in order to not lose even one when you need it most.
✓ Skylum Luminar
This software is a great alternative for Lightroom. It has an immense number of cool filters, lens correction, and other stuff that lets you up to your game.
Luminar is a powerful software that would suffice an enthusiast as well as a beginner. Workflow mimics Lightroom in many ways to make switching from one to another painless. Also, you have all the manual tuning stuff that is very important to experienced users.
✓ Fotor
This program is an online photo editing suite, utilizing exclusive technology to bring an unprecedented level of editing control to anyone and everyone. While the ‘collage’ and ‘edit’ features are already enjoyed by millions of users, daily, the new ‘design’ feature gives the common user the ability to design any form of graphics and cover, limited only by imagination.
Nell Chronister
✓ Adobe Suite
As a designer, I highly recommend the Adobe Creative Suite. I learned the basics of the entire Adobe suite in less than a year while I was in my undergrad. The software is always evolving and updating, and there are countless free tutorials and webinars that allow you to grow as a designer. If you put in the time to learn the software, it becomes intuitive. And once you have a handle on Adobe, the possibilities are ENDLESS!
David Jon Walker
✓ Adobe Photoshop
Adobe’s Photoshop, at this point, has become a verb as the expected solution of static visual graphics. It serves as the go to software for photograph editing and compositing multiple images for complex graphics; think movie posters and advertisement images for web graphics.
✓ Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator is a program for heavy lifting in vector-based artworks. Designers prefer to use Illustrator to create logos, illustrations, display typography, signage and more.
✓ Adobe InDesign
InDesign is the professional standard (replaced Aldus’ Pagemaker) for publication layout for magazines, books, and presentations. Imagery created in photoshop or designs from illustrator can be easily imported for use within a layout. Formatting text and large bodies of text is its strong suit. These three are the leading programs utilized by designers all over the world, from freelancers to advertising agencies.
Teaching graphic design as a professor at a university, it’s imperative that my students gain an adequate level of proficiency using these programs in order to push the boundaries of their creative muscles while readying themselves for the field. Experimentation and the collaborative use of these offerings continue to push the heights of design to new levels.
Ray Morrone
As the lines get blurred between Graphic Design, User Interface Design and Front End Delevopement most Creative Directors look for designers with a full toolbox of software knowledge.
✓ Adobe Creative Cloud
Knowing Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop is mandatory. But having knowledge of After Effects to create Ui/Ux annimations and prototypes is increasingly valuable.
✓ Cinema 4D
Knowing 3D software like Cinema 4D lets you take your projects to an impressive new level.
For example, a typical corporate logo project may start with the logo being created in Illustrator. Then the work will be imported into Cinema 4D and manipulated as a 3D object. From there it will be animated, cleaned up and refined in After Effects..
Andy Barker
I’m a street & travel photographer, photography teacher and tour guide based in Vietnam. I use Adobe Lightroom to edit my “good” photos and Snapseed for my “fun” photos.
✓ Adobe Lightroom
As a street photographer, I edit my photos very lightly, often tweaking little more than exposure, shadows and highlights. I never heavily edit or manipulate my photos. So why would I recommend the relatively expensive Lightroom software, if I don’t really use it to edit? Well, because it’s the by far the best way to catalogue and organise your pictures. And when you have hundreds of thousands of photos on multiple hard drives this becomes very important. I found when I started using Lightroom I began to enjoy looking at my own photos much more, which meant I did it more often, which in turn improved my photography.
✓ Snapseed
I use the Snapseed app to edit photos I take with my smartphone, and photos I bluetooth to my phone from my camera. I use the app to lightly tweak my images in a very similar way to Lightroom. I like the simple and intuitive user experience of the Snapseed and found it a good way to accelerate my image sharing workflow.
Brian Gargone
✓ Adobe Creative Cloud
At Squeeze Marketing, all of our designers use the Adobe Suite. It is the software we are all most familiar with and it gives us greater design opportunities. We use Illustrator for hand-drawn designs, whereas we use Photoshop or InDesign for laying out projects. Additionally, we most recently started using XD to wireframe our websites to show clients their navigation before taking it into development.
Jase Rodley
✓ Adobe Suite
Of course, there is going to be no better alternative than the leader of the pack Adobe suite, which offers everything you want, and is the likely the package you would be used in most workplaces.
Although there is little to offer in the way of competition for professional editing, there are some great phone Apps which allow enough of a resource to the more casual editor.
✓ Instrafitter
One of my current favourites being instrafitter, which allows you to put a number of border styles around your photo, given them the perfect vintage feel of a polaroid, and adding an extra pop to your photos when sharing.
Monica Lent
✓ Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom Classic is still the best photo editing software for the majority of photographers.
It supports a wide variety of camera makes and models, is easy for beginners to learn through free content online, and allows you plenty of flexibility and performance as a professional as well.
The downside of Adobe Lightroom is that the latest version is only available on a subscription model. While it’s good because Adobe regularly releases new features and performance improvements, the cost is higher in the long run for most users.
But if you like getting new features and improvements on a regular basis, the $20/mo photography package from Adobe is a great option and includes Photoshop as well.
Capture One Pro is an excellent photography processing tool, especially if you’re shooting with a system that isn’t well supported by Lightroom.
For example, Fujifilm RAW photos often lose detail as a result of the way Lightroom decodes the files captured by an X Trans sensor. Instead of adding a pre-processing step to your workflow with an additional tool like Irident X Transformer, it might be more efficient to work entirely in Capture One.
Apart from processing certain types of files, the distinction between Lightroom Classic and Capture One Pro is mostly up to personal preference. The former is simply more popular and has more learning material online than the latter.
If you want to own the software outright instead of paying a monthly subscription, Capture One Pro offers both a lifetime license and a subscription option. I’d recommend any user start with a monthly subscription to get a feel for the tool and see how it suits their workflow.