Microsoft will use a Build 2026 session to show developers how to port x86 apps to Windows on Arm using AI agents.

NVIDIA and Microsoft aim to usher in "a new era of PC" with RTX Spark. That chip, which is a Windows on Arm processor, is a powerhouse workstation that could brute force its way to run just about any app. But the RTX Spark won't have to flex as hard to run native Arm applications.

Microsoft and Qualcomm have pushed Windows on Arm for years, and now NVIDIA has joined the fight. Microsoft claims that 90% of time spent on Windows on Arm PCs is spent within natively compiled apps. The tech giant appears eager to close that gap.

A session at Microsoft Build focuses on how to port x86 apps to run natively on Windows on Arm by using AI. Agents are a major theme of Build 2026. Those AI assistants can perform actions and handle the more mundane and repetitive aspects of coding.

"See where ARM performance gains are real today, and how agentic AI can help convert and validate x86 applications for speed, compatibility, and scale," reads the Build session description.

In this context, "native" refers to an app being optimized for a specific architecture, such as ARM64. The term native can also refer to a program that is not a webview app. Microsoft also helps developers make the other type of native apps, they're just not the focus here.

If you listen to online trolls, you'd believe Windows on Arm is incredibly niche and all of your favorite apps are incompatible. The reality is that a large number of popular apps run natively on Windows on Arm PCs. I suggest checking "Works on WoA" to check the compatibility of your must-have apps.

Apps that do not run natively need to run through Microsoft's Prism emulation. Between native apps and emulation, a large library of apps are available on Arm-powered PC.

But a large library is not the same as a comprehensive library. There are some legacy applications, enterprise apps, and other programs that will not run well on Windows on Arm systems. In select cases, required apps will not work at all.

To fill those gaps, developers need to port their apps to Windows on Arm. The Build session runs through the tools developers can use to port apps, including debuggers, profilers, and compilers.

Qualcomm's Gaurav Goel will lead the session, which runs for 15 minutes on Wednesday, June 3 at 6:20 PM ET.

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Microsoft wants more native apps and elements on Windows 11, and so should you. Native apps and native code mean better performance and smoother computing. At Build 2026, Microsoft held several sessions to help third-party developers make native applications.

A core part of the Windows K2 initiative is to rebuild pieces like the Start menu as native components, but that's only part of the effort. For the entire Windows experience to improve, third-party developers need to embrace native Windows apps.

In this piece, native refers to modern Windows apps built with the latest Windows frameworks, such as WinUI 3. Native can also describe apps compiled for a specific architecture like ARM64, but that’s a separate topic. Here I’m focusing on Windows‑native apps, not architecture‑native builds.

Microsoft is building its own team of experts to make native in-box apps and experiences for Windows 11. The tech giant also has several tools and pieces of advice for developers that want to create native apps.

A session at Build 2026 titled "Use agents to build WinUI 3 apps" taught how to use agents to assist in the development of native apps. During the session, Beth Pan and Nikola Metulev explained how to create new WinUI 3 apps, improve existing apps, and migrate apps to use the Windows UI stack.

Migrating to the WinUI 3 framework can be tricky when using AI tools. Agents and models are often trained generically, meaning they'll show unoptimized results. The WinUI agent plugin for GitHub Copilot and Claude Code is a specialized AI agent that pull WinUI skills by default.

That's one of many tools made available to developers. Microsoft also has WinUI 3 templates (in preview) to streamline native app creation.

Another Build session breaks down how to modernize apps with AI. "Modernizing apps isn’t just rewriting code—it’s untangling dependencies, tracing data flows, and making changes without breaking production," explains the session description.

Developers relying heavily on AI will need hardware that can cope. The Surface Laptop Ultra was announced at Computex, but you can bet it was mentioned at Build.

The Surface Laptop Ultra is built to handle AI agents. It will be available with up to 128GB of RAM and is the first Surface to be built on the NVIDIA RTX Spark platform.

That platform combines the N1x CPU (20-core Arm), an RTX GPU (up to 6,144 cores), and unified memory to deliver up to 1 petaflop of AI compute.

The new NVIDIA Spark laptops can handle creative apps and even games, but they're also a power play by Microsoft to win over developers.

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Microsoft and NVIDIA are pushing a “new era of PC” built around the RTX Spark platform and the N1x chip. It’s the first real attempt to bring workstation‑class performance to Windows on ARM, and Adobe is already preparing its apps to take advantage of it.

Adobe partnered with NVIDIA to optimize Photoshop, Premiere, and other creative apps for the RTX Spark chip. Adobe promises two times faster AI usage, editing, coloring, and effects across Photoshop and Premiere.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang promises that RTX Spark chips will run every Windows app ever made. But there's a difference between merely running an app and fully supporting it. Several Adobe apps now fall into the latter category.

Premiere takes advantage of RTX Spark's unified memory, Blackwell GPU, and TensorRT, resulting in faster rendering. Photoshop has been "reimaged with GPU-accelerated compositing at its core," which helps with the performance of live filters, HDR, and other effects. AI features get a boost from TensorRT.

The NVIDIA RTX Spark platform is the combination of an N1x CPU, RTX graphics, and unified memory. It powers a new class of computing not previously available through Snapdragon X processors (though Qualcomm was eager to welcome NVIDIA to the family).

The NVIDIA RTX Spark platform is a full-stack collaboration between Microsoft, ASUS, and NVIDIA. The result is monstrous specs, such as 6,144 Blackwell RTX cores and support for up to 128GB of unified LPDDR5X RAM.

There are still major questions around the platform. NVIDIA hasn’t detailed pricing for N1x systems, and we still don't have a full list of specs. Claims made by NVIDIA, Microsoft, and other OEMs are promising, but we'll need to wait to see full benchmarks and real-world performance.

We'll see a wide range of devices powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark this year. The Surface Laptop Ultra and ASUS ProArt P16 and P14 are all built on the platform.

Adobe's apps should be updated to utilize NVIDIA RTX Spark around the same time. The company expects to ship updates to Premiere, Photoshop, and Substance 3D by the end of the year.

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Is the era of Photoshop ending? You might be forgiven for thinking so.

I'm sure we'll all be playing the world's smallest violin for Adobe. After years of locking users in with aggressive "cancellation fees" and extortionate prices for its oft-less-than-stable software suite, you could blame the firm's stock rout on karma. But, you'd be wrong. At least a little wrong.

You guessed it, the real reasons is all because of AI.

Traditional SaaS companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and others are seeing similar headwinds to gaming companies in some regards. As pressure from easier, cheaper, potentially lazier forms of their traditional offerings arrive via artificial intelligence and algorithms.

Adobe is of course known for products like Photoshop, Adobe Premier, and Adobe Acrobat Reader. In the previous tech epoch, if you wanted to manipulate photographs, create digital art or custom graphic designs, Adobe was the go-to platform. Whether you were designing graphics for games or flyers for your band's next gig, Adobe's software stack was (and generally, still is) the go-to productivity tool for thousands in the space. However, artificial intelligence is upending everything Adobe was, and is.

If you want a quick, professional-looking design for a newspaper ad or a letter header, free tools like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Grok, and Google Gemini will do it all far more quickly and far more cheaply than a traditional Adobe-powered human graphic designer will. Yes, it won't look anywhere near as good, but if you're wanting something cheap and cheerful for a side-gig it's not exactly cost-effective to pay someone on the high-end to do it. Increasingly, though, even major corporations are using AI tech to generate these types of assets, foregoing the need to pay Adobe's very expensive subscription fees.

As such, Adobe's near-future outlook looks pretty bleak for investors thinking long term. Artificial Intelligence is rapidly pivoting from adoption models to profitability plans in 2026, and a glance over the biggest movers and shakers in tech continues to revolve almost entirely around companies with strong artificial intelligence hooks.

The hyperscaler companies providing the infrastructure for artificial intelligence platforms, such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Google, have seen some of the biggest gains over the last three years as we all know. But companies that don't seem to have a strong or convincing value proposition in the AI universe seem to be under-performing the baseline stock market.

Investment banks like Goldman Sachs have downgraded Adobe stock to "Hold" or even "Sell" in some analyses as a result. The expectation that tools being offered by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google will become increasingly effective and efficient, rendering programs like Adobe Photoshop essentially obsolete. Adobe's own AI tools like Firefly don't seem to be winning it users.

Tools offered by companies like Salesforce are also seeing AI-related jitters. Microsoft's "Agentic AI" push is creating the perception that many traditional software systems could end up being fully automated, with the cash flowing to companies offering these tools at scale, via Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365. Microsoft is seeing rapid uptake of tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot at a nation state level, with many Fortune 500 companies backing the tech to automate workflows and documentation cataloguing without falling afoul of data protection laws and other aspects of regulatory compliance.

RELATED: Is SaaS dead? Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicts the collapse of software as a service, thanks to AI.

Companies that operation in more traditional means have struggled to react quickly enough to some of these pivots, at least in investor's eyes.

Some of these shifts could be chalked up to hype and post-Covid corrections, according to some analysts. Concerns about data sovereignty have risen to the fore given the state of global politics flowing from the United States, forcing major markets to reconsider investments in U.S.-originating tech. Many very major companies with sensitive, and massive operations are also hesitant about integrating AI for high-stakes operations, owing to its propensity for making huge, often catastrophic errors. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for example is often regarded as "fine" for small to mid size, more generalized businesses, but it doesn't compete with SAP for highly complex, global operations — AI or not.

Adobe is uniquely likely to suffer in this post-AI world, given that many of its tools are uniquely vulnerable to artificial intelligence solutions. It doesn't help that its home-grown AI Firefly is absolutely terrible. I used the prompt "generate me an article banner showing the Photoshop logo sinking into the ocean," and it spat out the above with garbled text that means absolutely nothing. The actual article banner was generated by Microsoft Copilot using OpenAI's DALLE-3, which nailed the prompt exactly as asked. I generally don't use AI for my article banners and prefer my own photographs, but here it felt pretty illustrative of the weak position Adobe finds itself in, sadly.

Adobe attempted to acquire its way out of its weak position by buying Figma, but the deal was blocked over competition concerns. Both Figma and competing products like Canva have been offering cheaper, simpler tools that give it an inarguably stronger position in the quick-and-easy AI universe.

Adobe is probably a good case study for what might happen to other traditional software companies. Younger cohorts are growing up expecting these types of tools and experiences. As the money in traditional high-end content creation becomes increasingly diluted and AI-driven, so too will the availability of users willing to pay for Adobe Suite, and other similar old-school products.

Perhaps it also offers an insight into why Microsoft has been rushing with an odd sense of panic to integrate AI into some of its products. But as Adobe is finding out, it's hardly a silver bullet to simply "integrate" AI — it has to actually be useful.

Today's trends could flip on a dime at any minute, though. Things are incredibly chaotic, with component costs and electricity availability putting a massive bottle neck on AI infra growth. Companies like OpenAI are under tons of pressure to begin delivering profitability, which is why they're integrating ads and hiking prices in some cases.

Perhaps traditional software services and good old human creativity will win in the end ... who am I kidding.

Adobe's world-famous Photoshop and other parts of its larger Creative Cloud suite are starting to function on Linux distributions via tweaks to the WINE compatibility layer. Curiously enough, developer "Phiality" initially has a GitHub pull request for Valve's fork of WINE in mind, built for its Proton layer in SteamOS and hardware like the well-loved Steam Deck gaming handheld (via Reddit).

Essentially, this means that Steam, the PC gaming launcher and storefront, makes it easier for Adobe users to work around an incompatibility roadblock and extend their workflow to Linux, rather than falling back on Windows 11 or macOS. Right now, this is extremely unofficial and has no involvement from Valve, and can be done without Steam at all, but it shows promise nonetheless.

Phiality's contributions to WINE target incompatibilities with Windows-centric 'mshtml' and 'msxml3' dependencies and core services that, at least so far, have hampered the ability to use Adobe's apps on Linux outside of a virtual machine. Now, the Creative Cloud appears to run with the latest release and has been tested "with Photoshop 2021 and 2025."

Update on the Adobe CC Installers Patch - Now the Collection Installer works too from r/linux_gaming

It sounds like a small hurdle, but overcoming issues where Adobe's installer expects missing parts of Microsoft's OS could open the floodgates to a wide variety of its apps running closer to natively on Linux. It's a big reason for keeping some users, including myself, in a dual-boot setup with Windows 11, and certain professions still demand the use of its Creative Cloud over any alternatives.

That might not be the case forever, as more users in creative fields are seemingly choosing artificial intelligence and generative AI models for visual work. Adobe's share price is already falling, and software-as-a-service in general is struggling to compete with the convenience and near-undetectable results of tools like Google's Nano Banana Pro, overtaking even ChatGPT's DALL-E.

Still, more platform choices for Photoshop only benefit the average consumer — Windows 11 is still my primary operating system, but Linux played a bigger role in my life throughout 2025 and remains a convenient (and free) alternative when I need it. While alternatives like GIMP and Krita offer native image editing software for Linux, Adobe still holds an undeniable advantage in the industry, and I'll be watching this development with a keen eye.

Do you use any of Adobe's Creative Cloud apps? Or have you already found an alternative that works for you? Let me know in the comments to give me an idea of how mainstream Photoshop is in 2026.

In a rather unexpected move, especially considering it is free and that the words free and Adobe rarely appear in the same sentence, the company has integrated its popular creative tools directly into ChatGPT.

Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Acrobat are now accessible inside the AI chat experience. This marks a new step for Adobe, allowing users to control and access Photoshop features using simple prompts.

By removing much of the traditional complexity, it significantly lowers the barrier to entry and could enable less experienced users to produce surprisingly competent edits without needing to learn the full application first.

What does Photoshop in ChatGPT mean to you?

Adobe’s full creative suite will set you back $54.99 a month, or $599.88 a year, for access to Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Acrobat, and more. It is an expensive ask, especially for casual users.

Adobe has also built a reputation for aggressively locking users into subscriptions, including charging fees for early cancellation. It is not exactly known as a consumer-friendly company, which makes this move all the more surprising.

So, what is actually going on here, and why are some of Adobe’s tools now accessible inside ChatGPT for free?

While this looks like a big win for users on the surface, there are some important trade-offs to be aware of. Connecting an Adobe account to ChatGPT means Adobe can access conversation history and memories (this may just be chats where Adobe apps are used), along with basic account information, IP address, and approximate location.

Data is a lucrative business, and this integration gives Adobe exposure to ChatGPT’s reported 800 million weekly users, assuming they choose to use the Adobe apps. What we are really looking at is a strategic partnership that benefits both sides, giving ChatGPT an edge over Google’s more advanced image generation tools for now, while helping position ChatGPT as an all-encompassing platform rather than just a chatbot.

How Adobe’s ChatGPT integration actually works

If you want to enable and use Adobe apps within ChatGPT, you can do so by following these steps:

• Open ChatGPT on desktop, web, or mobile. Click Settings, then go to Apps & Connectors.
• Scroll through or search the apps list and select Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Express, or Adobe Acrobat. Click Connect.
• When prompted, sign in with your Adobe account and confirm the connection. Once completed, the app will be linked to ChatGPT.
• Go back to the main chat screen. Click the + icon next to the message box.
• Select More and choose the Adobe app you enabled.
• You can also activate it by mentioning it directly in your prompt, such as asking Photoshop to edit an image or Acrobat to edit a PDF.

Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat are available for free inside ChatGPT on desktop, web, and iOS. Adobe Express is also available on Android, with the other apps expected to follow later.

This is not a replacement for the full native applications, but it is more capable than you might expect. From effects and adjustments to more involved edits, it offers an accessible way to achieve results that would normally require tutorials or prior experience.

If you want a clearer idea of what it can actually do, there is a solid YouTube video that walks through its capabilities in detail. If, however, you do want a different tool, Affinity is a free alternative that launched recently.

Is it useful, or a waste of time? Let me know if you'd use Photoshop inside ChatGPT in the comments!

Affinity, one of the only tools that competes directly with Adobe’s photo and design suite, is now completely free. It arrives as a single, reimagined app that unifies photo editing, vector design, and layout tools in one place. According to Affinity, it is free forever for everyone on Windows and macOS, with an iPad version coming soon.

Affinity is now part of Canva after last year’s acquisition, and the company is seemingly sticking to its promise to preserve the product’s power and feel. There is no stripped-back tier here. You can download it, use the full suite, and never touch a subscription if you do not want to.

There is an optional Canva Premium subscription, which unlocks Canva AI tools inside Affinity, but it is not pushed on you. I used Affinity Photo before this update, and this new all-in-one app feels great so far, especially for photo editing.

This move stands in sharp contrast to Adobe. Photoshop alone costs $22.99 a month if billed annually, or $34.99 if you pay month to month. Try to cancel, and you are hit with a fee for leaving early if you’re on the annual plan. If you thought Adobe’s pricing was already frustrating, this change from Affinity makes it look even more out of touch.

Affinity becomes free forever

This new Affinity app is an all-in-one workspace for vector, pixel, and layout tools. It includes RAW development, live filters, batch processing, smart selection, and more. Everything runs in real time, so edits feel smooth and responsive even on complex projects.

It also supports major design formats, including PSD, AI, PDF, SVG, and TIFF, and you can export directly into Canva for collaboration if you want to, but you can just export as normal, too. Some users online suggested you must sign in manually with a Canva account, but as far as I can tell, I was able to sign up via my Google account instead, which presumably creates a Canva account from the information in my Google account, just like anything else.

AI tools are available here, too, but only for Canva Premium subscribers. Canva has stated that Affinity work is not used to train AI features. That stance matters, especially after Adobe faced backlash over similar concerns, which pushed it to update its customer agreements and reassure users that it also does not use customer content for training generative AI.

Adobe’s subscription squeeze and failed Figma play

If you want access to all of Adobe’s creative tools, the full Creative Cloud plan costs $59.99 a month when you commit to a yearly subscription. Cancel within the first 14 days and you can walk away for free. Cancel after that, and Adobe charges 50% of the remaining contract value as an early-termination fee.

You can choose a month-to-month plan instead, which is more expensive, but it avoids early-termination fees.

It is a shame because Adobe’s software really is excellent and ahead of the curve in many areas. The frustration has never been about the quality of the tools; it has always been about the pricing and policies wrapped around them.

Adobe also attempted to acquire Figma for $20 billion, but the deal was terminated in 2023 following scrutiny from UK and EU regulators. That left the door open for tools like Canva and Affinity to grow, and now Affinity has moved to a zero-cost model that makes Adobe’s subscription approach look even tougher to justify.

A new era for creative tools?

Fortunately, it feels like we are entering a time where Adobe is no longer the only option for professionals and aspiring creatives. Affinity, which previously had a one-time purchase model, is now completely free and offers a full suite for design work.

There are strong alternatives across other creative categories, too. Davinci Resolve continues to dominate in the video space for many editors, and there are plenty of other tools out there if you are willing to look.

Choice could finally become part of the creative software landscape again, and that can only be a good thing for users.

FAQ

As part of an anti-Amazon Prime Day deal this week, Newegg is offering fantastic discounts on various Adobe Creative Cloud Plans when you input the proper promo code.

For example, using the FTTEU7578 promo code gives you 12 months of access to Photoshop and Lightroom while only paying $128.99 at Newegg, rather than the usual full $239.88 price.

Best of all, you don't even need an Amazon Prime membership to take advantage of these deals.

Best Adobe deals

• Creative Cloud [12-Months]: was $659.88 now $394.99 at Newegg
• Creative Cloud Student & Teacher Edition [12-Months]: was $239.88 now $158.99 at Newegg
• Creative Cloud Photography Plan [12-Months]: was $239.88 now $128.99 at Newegg
• Lightroom [12-Months]: was $119.88 now $78.99 at Newegg
• Acrobat Pro [12-Months]: was $239.88 now $148.99 at Newegg

Nothing compares to Adobe programs when it comes to power and versatility

To be perfectly honest, I'm really not a fan of Adobe's subscription plans.

However, I've already spent years trying to find alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom, only to come crawling back to Adobe when I realized that, while good, no other creative programs fully measure up.

If you want the very best creative tools on offer or are trying to get into the creative industry, it's really a good idea to have Adobe skills in your back pocket.

There are several programs included in Creative Cloud, so I'll start by focusing on the big boy itself: Photoshop.

As someone who uses Photoshop for both work and my own creative projects, I can say that this program deserves to be called Adobe's flagship software.

It offers a wide range of powerful tools that I heavily rely on each week, whether I'm removing dust from a tech photo or drawing a vibrant bluejay for my own amusement.

Arguably, the best thing about Adobe Creative Cloud programs is that the company is regularly updating them and adding new features that make them even more invaluable to creatives.

Just last month, I discovered that a hidden reflection removal tool had been added in Photoshop; it's so effective and fast that I've been using it regularly to clean up my various photos for the last few weeks to impressive effect.

As shown in the image above, a mixture of tools allowed me to clean up a picture of my cat so that the water stains and distracting reflections showing up on the glass were completely eliminated, thus allowing the details of Dandy's poofy white head to come through more clearly.

As you can see, Creative Cloud subscriptions are rather expensive, so if you happen to be in school right now, I highly recommend getting the more affordable Student & Teacher Edition. I bought this when I was in college, and it helped me develop several important skills that I still use at work to this day.

Just note that you will need to prove that you are currently attending or working at a valid school for this discounted version to be activated for you.

Now, if you're a photographer but don't need all of the features that Photoshop provides, you'll be better served with a simple Lightroom subscription. This program offers some powerful photo editing tools, but with a simpler interface.

I also recommend...

Thanks to a limited-time deal, a full-year Creative Cloud subscription is 70% off for students and teachers at Adobe. In case you're not aware, this membership gives you access to over 20 creative apps including Adobe's flagship program, Photoshop. However, this deal ends on Feb. 17, 2025, so if you want to take advantage of this discount you'll need to do so soon.

Taking advantage of a Creative Cloud student discount in college helped give me an edge

If you're interested in learning how to use Adobe Creative Cloud apps, I highly recommend going for this discount. I can personally say that knowing how to use many of these programs can give you an edge in various career fields, whether or not they are creative-focused. Adobe subscriptions are usually pretty expensive, so getting a year's subscription for 70% off is a real boon when you're a poor, starving college student. Believe me. I know.

When I was in college, a similar student and teacher Adobe discount was going on, and I decided to go for it. I'm so happy I did. Seriously, I could not have foreseen how knowing Photoshop, Illustrator, and more would help me stand out in my career, but it really has. Between photo editing, video editing, and digital drawing, I tend to work in Creative Cloud programs every week, if not every day. I've been a professional writer for years now, but I'm often one of the only people I work with who knows how to use Adobe's flagship software.

Since graduating college, I've been able to use Creative Cloud apps to create mockups, visuals, videos, and final projects that frequently get used at just about every job I've had. More than once during interviews, my Photoshop skills have been one of the first things potential employers bring up when looking at my resume.

That's not to say that you'll automatically know how to use these programs once you have access to them, but having that access at a much lower price than usual brings you one step closer to mastering them. As for myself, I ended up taking a couple of classes in college and have since learned how to use Creative Cloud programs more thoroughly by looking up various video and written tutorials online. If you have the drive, you can learn these programs and give yourself an edge in just about whatever career you choose.

An Adobe Creative Cloud subscription gets you access to all of Adobe's creative apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Fresco, and more. The suite is the industry standard for creators and provides a robust set of features for making content. Right now, you can save 50% on Adobe Creative Cloud thanks to an early Black Friday deal. That discount drops the monthly price of the suite to $29.98 but note that the deal only secures that price for one year. That means you'll have to cancel your subscription before 12 months are up or be prepared to pay $59.99 per month.

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Is Adobe Creative Cloud worth it?

I trained on the Adobe creative suite at university and have used several Adobe apps over the years for work and my casual hobbies. I don't know any creators who question if Adobe apps are professional grade. They're not perfect and are a bit bloated for my liking, but they're the industry standard for a reason. The debate among many creators is if Adobe Creative Cloud is worth the subscription cost.

At its full price of $59.99 per month, Adobe Creative Cloud is expensive, though I'd argue its worth it to anyone who needs the apps. Back in the day you used to be able to purchase powerful applications once and then use them forever. Adobe shifted to a subscription model a long time ago though. The pricing model ensures that apps are up to date and get new features, but it also means there's a recurring cost of being in the Adobe ecosystem.

My answer to "Is Adobe Creative Cloud worth it?" is that you already know if you need an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. If you're a professional, you may not even have a choice as some companies and clients only use Adobe software. Even if not strictly required by a client or company, you may have spent years learning how to produce content using Adobe apps and not want to switch. If you fall into any of these categories, now is the perfect time to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud. A 50% discount adds up quickly and saves you just under $360 over the course of a year.

If you're a new creator, haven't learned the Adobe suite yet, or only create content casually, Adobe Creative Cloud is probably overkill. There are excellent apps available such as Affinity Photo, Luminar AI, and DaVinci Resolve. Many of the best photo editors and best video editing apps have flat, one-off pricing or even free versions with limits you can remove by paying.

If you need specific Adobe apps or a vast library of creative applications, the 50% off sale on Adobe Creative Cloud is an excellent deal. Getting over 20 apps for only a few dollars more than the normal monthly price of Photoshop or Premiere Pro is excellent value.

What you need to know

• A preview build of Windows 11 improves Prism emulation for apps.
• The "major feature update" adds support for more CPU features under emulation, including using AVX and AVX2, BMI, FMA, and F16C extensions.
• Adobe Premiere Pro 25 already uses some of the new Prism emulation features to run on Windows on Arm PCs.

Windows on Arm PCs powered by chips like the Snapdragon X Elite processor are about to get a nice boost. Microsoft is testing an update to its Prism emulation software that adds support for running more CPU features under emulation. The change will help non-native Arm applications run better on the best Copilot+ PCs.

The new feature is in testing among Windows Insiders in the Canary Channel. Microsoft rolled out Build 27744 to the channel recently. Interestingly, support for additional extensions is not entirely new. Adobe Premiere Pro 25 already uses some of the newly supported extensions when run through Prism emulation. But starting with Build 27744, any x64 app under emulation will have access to the expanded list of extensions.

Diving a bit into the nitty gritty, apps running through Prism emulation now have support for more extensions, including AVX and AVX2, BMI, FMA, and F16C. Windows does not require those extensions to run, but many apps rely on them.

The new CPU features are limited to x64 applications running through Prism emulation. Below, I've reshared the full change log in Build 27744 shared by Microsoft.

Assuming all goes well during testing, the improvement to Prism emulation should make its way to all PCs that utilize the feature in the near future. The list of the best native Windows on Arm apps grows regularly, but there are still plenty of apps that need to run through emulation.

What’s new with Build 27744

New Processor Feature Support in Prism

In today’s Canary Channel Insider Preview build, we’re previewing a major feature update to Prism, our emulator for Windows on Arm, that will make it possible for more 64-bit x86 (x64) applications to run under emulation by adding support for more CPU features under emulation.

This new support in Prism is already in limited use today in the retail version of Windows 11, version 24H2, where it enables the ability to run Adobe Premiere Pro 25 on Arm. Starting with Build 27744, the support is being opened to any x64 application under emulation. You may find some games or creative apps that were blocked due to CPU requirements before will be able to run using Prism on this build of Windows.

At a technical level, the virtual CPU used by x64 emulated applications through Prism will now have support for additional extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture. These extensions include AVX and AVX2, as well as BMI, FMA, F16C, and others, that are not required to run Windows but have become sufficiently commonplace that some apps expect them to be present. You can see some of the new features in the output of a tool like Coreinfo64.exe.

Note that in today’s preview, only x64 applications can use these new CPU features. If you have a 32-bit app or a 64-bit app that uses a 32-bit helper to detect CPU feature support, that app won’t detect the new features in Prism.

We welcome any feedback from Insiders who are interested in trying out apps and games using this early preview of Prism. Please submit any feedback on compatibility issues or performance regressions through the Feedback Hub (Win + F) under Apps and the specific app you’re seeing issues with (if you don’t see the app listed, use “All other apps”) to help us to ensure that this updated Prism provides a great experience.

Thanks for helping us improve emulation on Windows. We’re excited to see customers able to run more apps and games that they care about on Windows on Arm!

Changes and Improvements

Start menu

• “All apps” is now just “All” on the Start menu.

Input

• We’re beginning to roll out a new Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 that supports the ability to use your Xbox controller to navigate and type. This includes button accelerators (example: X button for backspace, Y button for spacebar) additionally the keyboard keys have been vertically aligned for better controller navigation patterns.

Task Manager

• We’ve updated the design of the Disconnect and Logoff dialogs in Task Manager to now support dark mode and text scaling.
• In the Performance section we now label listed disks with their type.

Settings

• The detach virtual hard disk (VHD/VHDx) button we added under Settings > System > Storage > Disks & Volumes introduced with Build 27686 is now back with this build after being temporarily disabled starting with Build 27718.

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What you need to know

• Ahead of the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2024, Adobe announced several new Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Firefly features that should save users time in their workflows. 
• Premiere Pro gets improved color management abilities, while After Effects will support Substance 3D assets, ultra-realistic shadow casting, and faster performance with a hardware-accelerated UI.
• Enterprise customers gain access to Firefly's Enhance Speech API (beta), which repairs dialogue, removes background noise, and can even translate dialog to different languages with believable visual lip-syncing using AI.

This year, the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2024 will take place from September 13 through September 16 at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Ahead of this event, Adobe has announced several important updates to Premiere Pro (Beta), After Effects, and Firefly Services (beta). Here's a breakdown of all of these updates.

Color management gets a whole lot easier in Premiere Pro (Beta)

• Adobe Premiere Pro (Beta)
  • Premiere Color Management: This system works in the background to create automatic tone-mapping of RAW and log video after dropping clips in the timeline from basically any camera. It doesn't require LUTs, either. Color accuracy is far better now when you send projects between Premiere and After Effects and back via Dynamic Link. Many effects, including Lumetri color correction, are now color-space aware. There are six high-fidelity presets to choose from:
    • Direct Rec. 709 (SDR)
    • Direct HLG (HDR)
    • Direct PQ (HDR)
    • Wide Gamut (Tone Mapped)
    • Wide Gamut (Minimal Tone Mapping)
    • Wide Gamut (No Tone Mapping)
  • Properties Panel: A new context-sensitive Properties Panel has been added, filled with the most popular and needed tools. This includes a built-in crop effect with new on-screen direct crop manipulation controls. Users can also adjust the properties of multiple clips at once. 
  • Native Format Support: Premiere Pro is using the industry standard ACEScct wide gamut color space. Users can disable all color management from custom LUT workflows, easily switch from Rec709 SDR to PQ or HLG HDR, support RAW video (RED, ARRI, Sony, Canon, ProRes RAW), and support Log format (RED, ARRI, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Nikon, Leica, DJI, GoPro).
  • Improved Performance: Users can quickly apply effects and features faster than before. Plus, the program now offers three times faster ProRes rendering to make exports a lot quicker.
  • Refreshed UI: There are now two dark modes, a light mode, and a high contrast mode. The program also has cleaner fonts for better legibility as well as visual continuity with other Creative Cloud apps.

After Effects now works seamlessly with Substance 3D and has better performance too

• Adobe After Effects
  • Enhanced 3D Workflows: This major improvement allows users to seamlessly send Substance 3D assets into After Effects, meaning 3D workflows can blend into live-action footage and 2D motion design faster than before. Shadow Catchers even allows users to create realistic shadows on 3D elements while depth mapping encodes distance information to allow realistic camera behavior to these 3D elements with post-processing effects like depth-of-field, blur, and fog.
  • Rapid Motion Design Creation: There are now 33 new animation presets including charts, graphs, numeric counters, animated speed-lines and more. 
  • Improved performance: Changes allow for much faster playback responsiveness while three times faster ProRes rendering makes the export process much quicker. Hardware-accelerated AVC and HEVC make H.265 clips work faster and playback smoother. The program also supports more cameras, including Sony, Canon, RED, and Arri. A significant Dynamic Link update allows projects sent between After Effects and Premiere Pro to have better color. Additionally, hardware-accelerated UI/UX on Windows significantly speeds up activity by up to four times, depending on your hardware configuration.
  • Refreshed UI:  A new look to the interface brings cleaner fonts and a more modern design. Users get to choose between two dark modes, a light mode, and a high-contrast mode. Plus, the program is designed to look more similar to other Creative Cloud apps. 
  • Connection with Substance 3D: Users also get access to 20,000 fully licensed Substance 3D materials, including models and environment lights.

Easily improve audio quality and create believable translations into different languages

• Adobe Firefly Services (beta)
  • Enhanced Speech API (beta): AI now powers video and audio processes to repair poorly recorded dialogue, remove obtrusive background noise, and improve overall audio quality. This program can even run batch processing on RAW audio files to save users time. 
  • Dubbing & Lip Sync API & UI (beta): Allows for the translation of dialogue into different languages while still sounding like the original speaker. On top of that, it even creates a believable visual lip sync. 

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Pros for editors and cons for the dubbing industry

Adobe has essentially improved its video editing suits by making it easier to work with footage from different sources without color inconsistencies. Premiere Pro Beta will support a wide gamut color space for Log (found on some modern GoPro cameras) and RAW-format videos, allowing seamless integration with After Effects while maintaining HDR ranges for colors and brightness. Color management is often daunting to budding video editors, but at least the headaches of importing files with differing formats are being eased.

Critically, updating After Effects to add hardware acceleration for its UI on Windows will prevent slowdowns when working on complex projects using thousands of keyframes.

This should significantly simplify the lives of long-form video content creators and hopefully lead to the eventual appearance of a performant Arm-native After Effects build for Windows on Arm devices.

Personally, the color correction bumps take a backseat to the continued improvements to Adobe's audio suite, with its enhanced speech API carrying over the same kind of benefits found in Adobe Podcast that we've used in our own Windows Central Podcast to clean up background noise and generally improve quality.

Using Adobe generative AI for dubbing and lip sync might be divisive, as it essentially replaces the need to hire native speakers from other regions, but I'll still try it when it becomes available. For now, I'll be digging back into tutorials covering the absolute basics of color correction because it's still a daunting environment for me. Still, it's great to see Adobe making the process more streamlined; just please bring it to ARM64 without emulation!

What you need to know

• Adobe has released the x86 version of Premiere Pro for Windows 11 on ARM devices running Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X processors.
• The app will run under emulation until an ARM native app is ready, which Adobe says it is currently working on.
• Competing apps such as DaVinci Resolve are already available natively on ARM.

Adobe has enabled the ability to run Premiere Pro under emulation on Windows 11 on ARM laptops powered by the Snapdragon X system-on-a-chip. Adobe had originally allowed Premiere Pro to run under emulation when Copilot+ PCs first launched but disabled the ability once it became aware of performance issues and glitches.

The app is now back in the Creative Cloud app, suggesting Adobe has solved some of those early problems. Premiere Pro still runs under emulation, meaning it will run slower compared to an Intel or AMD machine. In our early testing, the app is good enough for a basic video project with a handful of layers and audio at 1080p. 

The company does say it is working on an ARM-native version of Premiere Pro, but unfortunately, it doesn't say when this will be ready. Photoshop is the only Adobe app that's available natively for Windows on ARM currently. Other Adobe apps such as After Effects are expected to come to Windows on ARM under emulation later this year.

Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ PCs first launched on June 18, after a big unveiling event held the month prior. During that event, Adobe committed to supporting Windows on ARM with the Adobe Creative Suite, and you can already run Photoshop, Fresco, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Acrobat, Firefly, and Illustrator (beta) on the new Snapdragon X laptops.

Adobe's competitors are also working to bring their apps to the Windows on ARM platform. Apps such as the video and color editing suite DaVinci Resolve already has a beta build available that's native to Windows on ARM. Microsoft's own Clipchamp app is also already ARM native.

What you need to know

• Making good on its promise to bring more of the Creative Cloud suite natively to Windows on Arm, Illustrator is now available to download. 
• The beta version has just made Adobe's promised July timeframe and can be downloaded by subscribers from the Creative Cloud client. 
• The one many are waiting on though is Premiere Pro, and that's still MIA. 

Back at the big Copilot+ PC launch earlier this year, Adobe promised full support for Windows on Arm and Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus laptops for the Creative Cloud suite. It's not a small task, and the latest update is that there's another app joining the crowd. 

As reported by XDA, Adobe Illustrator beta is now available for Windows on Arm. Users of this app will surely rejoice, but let's be real, it's not the one most are waiting on. 

That, of course, is video editing powerhouse, Premiere Pro. It's perhaps a little surprising Adobe hasn't chosen to prioritize this over all else, but here we are. At least if you want a native, powerful video editor on a Snapdragon laptop right now, you can load up DaVinci Resolve. 

Illustrator's beta with ARM64 support can be downloaded from the Creative Cloud client on Windows, and barely squeaks inside the July timeframe Adobe initially promised for it. 

Unfortunately, Premiere Pro, along with After Effects and Adobe Media Encoder, still don't have a target for release according to Adobe's FAQ. 

You can, of course, install the x64 version of Adobe apps not built natively for Windows on Arm and use them, but since they're emulated, the performance is not going to be as good. And when it comes to heavy editing, performance is key. 

But if you've been waiting on Illustrator to get updated for your shiny new Snapdragon laptop, go right ahead and get it loaded up. It's ready and waiting for you. 

I've been using Adobe programs since college when I was working on my graphic design minor. You can talk to anyone in the professional arts industry, and you'll find that Adobe offers the best creative programs for photo editing, video diting, vector design, digital drawing, and more. The problem is that the subscription for Adobe programs can be a bit heavy on the wallet, but a current deal is making this membership much more affordable. 

From now until August 4, 2024, you can save 40% on Adobe Creative Cloud apps at Adobe for the first year subscription on both Trial with Purchase and Paid Up Front plans. 

If you want, you can even add a 30-day free trial for Adobe Stock to get up to 10 Standard Assets for your creative projects. If you decide you're not interested, you can cancel risk-free before the trial ends without incurring fees. 

What if I don't need that many programs?

Not sure you need all 20+ apps in the Creative Cloud suite? You might be better suited to a subscription to just one of Adobe's powerful programs. Here's a breakdown of the most popular Adobe software along with their capabilities. 

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What's so great about Adobe Creative Cloud?

Adobe offers the strongest creative programs because they are the most convenient and powerful apps available. That's why names like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, and Acrobat are so well-known even outside of the creative world. Many competitors have attempted to knock Adobe off its throne, but none can fully measure up. I know, I've checked. That's why even though people generally dislike the Adobe subscription plans, they end up using Adobe anyway, rather than one of the company's rivals. Thankfully, this current 40% off deal makes the subscription far more affordable. 

So, what makes Adobe Creative Cloud so good? There are a few things. First, I'll just reiterate that Creative Cloud is a group of over 20 creative programs and having access to each one allows users to take advantage of the special focus each one provides when working on their projects. 

Over the years, I've spent a great deal of time with the programs that make up Adobe Creative Cloud. Of these apps, the ones I use the most are Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Acrobat Pro. Although there is some overlap with the tools and capabilities of each of the Creative Cloud programs, each app has a different specialty, so I sometimes find myself jumping between different software when working on one project. For instance, I might want to digitally draw a raster image in Photoshop but then add a vector layer on top of my work using Illustrator. Once done, I might put the final image into Premiere Pro for a video. 

Something I really like is that Adobe does a fantastic job of updating its software regularly with refined tools or even new ones. Recently, we've seen an increase in artificial intelligence (AI) tools in Adobe apps thanks to the development and launch of Adobe Firefly. This program allows creatives to get the desired effects from their images and fonts using text prompts. There is a differentiation here from other generative AI programs in that Firefly is meant to help refine your creativity rather than doing all of the work itself.

Outside of generative work, Adobe Sensei, the company's long-time AI assistant, can help enhance your imagery. You can colorize black and white family photos, remove distracting pixelated artifacts from older images, quickly add interesting filters to your work, remove backgrounds, and much more.

It's true that Adobe programs can be complex, especially when you consider Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. I myself took several college courses to understand how to use this software. However, since these are such popular apps, there are tons of tutorials online (both in written and video formats) to help you learn how to use their tools. In fact, I often go online and learn new things I didn't know how to do. You can, too.

In the world of photo editors, Adobe Photoshop is the absolute pinnacle program that all its competitors aspire to be. However, this program takes a lot of training and time to master, which is why the company also offers a far more simpler version for beginners in the form of Adobe Photoshop Elements. 

You can use this software to touch up portraits, swap out photo backgrounds, apply effects, and more. Plus, Photoshop Elements 2024 offers guided edits to teach you how to apply certain filters and effects to your images. 

During Prime Day, a one-time purchase for the latest version, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2024, was reduced from $99.99 to just $54.99 at Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, and Newegg. However, this deal ended when Prime Day 2024 did. 

UPDATE July 18 @ 9 AM PT: This deal is no longer available now that Prime Day 2024 has ended. The rest of this article is unchanged from when it was first written. 

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Why I recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements 2024

I use the full Photoshop program on a regular basis in order to digitally draw, fix up family photos, and more. Because of this, I've had a few people ask me to teach them how to use the software. The thing is, I had to go to several semesters of classes in order to use Adobe's flagship app the way I do, so it isn't the easiest thing to teach to others. As such, I usually point photo-editing beginners to Photoshop Elements 2024 instead. It's a one-time purchase that doesn't require a subscription (unlike Photoshop).

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While not as expansive as the full Photoshop program, Photoshop Elements 2024 is much easier to navigate due to its simplified interface and the fewer tools provided. Even so, you can easily use this software to do things like remove artifacts in older images, remove zits and other skin blemishes in family photos, swap out backgrounds for more dynamic-looking ones, restore old images, and more. It's a fantastic way to make your family photos and portraits look nicer with just a few clicks.

One of the nicest things about Photoshop Elements 2024 is that it also offers Guided Edits, which (as the name suggests) teaches you how to apply certain filters and effects to your photos. That way, you don't need to take classes in order to alter your images. 

On top of that, there is a large Photoshop Elements user community, so you can always hop online to find helpful videos and forums where people discuss the best photo editing practices with Photoshop Elements.

What you need to know

• The first wave of PCs running on Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors started shipping this week.
• Those Arm-based chips promise impressive performance but require an emulation layer to run certain apps, which lowers performance and efficiency.
• Adobe will release compatible versions of Illustrator and InDesign in July 2024 and Premiere Pro and After Effects later this year.

Adobe apps are about to get better on Windows on Arm PCs like the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7. Some of Adobe's apps are already optimized for Arm64, but Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and After Effects are not. Fortunately for creators hoping to get the best performance from the Adobe suite while using a PC running on a Snapdragon X processor, that situation is about to change.

In a briefing attended by Windows Central on the new Surface Pro 11 it was stated that Illustrator and InDesign will have native Arm versions compatible versions in July 2024. That means the apps will run emulated via Microsoft PRISM (its new emulation layer in Windows 11 24H2), not native ARM64. Still, that's an improvement, as Adobe currently has blocks for some of its apps when it comes to installing them on ARM64 devices, like the new Snapdragon X PCs.

Premiere Pro and After Effects users will have to wait a bit longer, as those apps will have Arm-native versions "later this year." The rollout of more Adobe apps native to Arm should help creators and boost the viability of the best Copilot+ PCs.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom are already ARM64 native, having arrived on the platform in late 2020.

The first wave of Copilot+ PCs shipped this week, and several other devices running the Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus are on the way. These chips promise better battery life and efficiency than their x86 counterparts, but they have limitations. Apps not native to Arm have to run through emulation, which is not as efficient. Microsoft's Prism emulation layer is technologically impressive but does not deliver the same performance as running apps natively.

Lighter applications should still perform well when emulated. The ultimate goal is for everyday users not to notice or care if an app is emulated. We're not there yet, at least regarding specific applications.

Can Snapdragon X Elite run Adobe Premiere Pro?

Until recently, you could not run Adobe Premiere Pro in emulation. That has changed, making it possible to use the video editing application on Windows on Arm PCs. That being said, the experience is not ideal. While using the PC for his ASUS VivoBook S 15 review, our Senior Editor Zac Bowden ran into issues when trying to use Adobe Premiere Pro. In fact, it was the primary exception to an otherwise smooth experience of running x86 apps in emulation:

"So, what was the exception I mentioned? I could only find one that I could tell would benefit from being Arm64 native: Adobe Premiere Pro. On these new devices, Adobe finally lets you run Premiere Pro under emulation, but Premiere Pro is a massive application that's very heavy even on Intel systems, so unsurprisingly, it doesn't run amazingly here.

Can you edit and render a video with it? Yes! But your experience will depend on the kind of video you're editing. You should be golden if you're editing a simple 1080p 30fps video. You will see the app struggle if you're working with multiple layers and effects or 4K and 60fps. You'll see frame-dropping in the timeline preview feed and rendering the video will take longer than on an Intel machine."

Adobe releasing a version of Premiere Pro that can run on Arm natively should make video editing with the app much better on PCs with a Snapdragon X Elite processor. DaVinci Resolve, a video editing app that competes with Premiere Pro, already has an Arm64 native version which works smoothly on Snapdragon X Elite-powered PCs.

Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects should also see boosts in performance and efficiency when they make the jump to being Arm-native. The first two of those programs will have native Arm versions next month, while Adobe expects to ship Arm-optimized versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects later this year.

What you need to know

• Adobe has been placed under fire by the US Department of Justice for deceptive subscription practices and expensive cancellation charges.
• The company is allegedly burying crucial terms about the subscription plan behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks, making it hard for the subscriber to learn about the exorbitant cost tied to the early termination fee.
• Top executives at the company are also under scrutiny for participating in the acts and practices of Adobe.
• Adobe has refuted the claims and indicated its subscription agreements are transparent, and the cancellation process is simple. 

Adobe has been placed under fire by The US government for allegedly using deceptive subscription practices coupled with expensive fees that make it extremely difficult to cancel. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint on Monday citing that Adobe is using deceptive tactics to enroll users in its "most lucrative subscription plan."

The suit further details that the company doesn't disclose crucial information about the plan. Instead, Adobe 'buries' the terms in the “fine print and behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks.” Consequently, it's challenging for users to find the details regarding the exorbitant cost tied to the early termination fee, which can amount to hundreds of dollars.

According to the DOJ, users go through an “onerous and complicated” process when attempting to cancel the subscription. The process also forces users to navigate multiple web pages, including an early termination fee. This may potentially deter some users from proceeding with the cancellation process. 

Similar issues persist when users attempt to cancel their subscriptions by calling Adobe's call center for assistance. The DOJ says the live chats or calls are dropped. As such, you start the entire process afresh, making it tedious and redundant. 

According to the Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, Samuel Levine:

“Adobe trapped customers into year-long subscriptions through hidden early termination fees and numerous cancellation hurdles. Americans are tired of companies hiding the ball during subscription signup and then putting up roadblocks when they try to cancel.”

Adobe executives, including The Senior VP of digital go-to-market and sales Maninder Sawhney, and The President of Adobe's digital media business David Wadhwani are also targeted by the lawsuit. According to the DOJ's complaint, the executives “directed, controlled, had the authority to control, or participated in the acts and practices of Adobe.”

 According to the company's general counsel and chief trust officer, Dana Rao:

"We are transparent with the terms and conditions of our subscription agreements and have a simple cancellation process." 

Adobe has indicated that it'll refute and fight the FTC's claims in court.

What you need to know

• Adobe Firefly is the creative software company's machine learning model that makes generative AI possible in various Adobe programs. 
• Certain programs like Photoshop have already seen integration with Adobe Firefly's generative AI text prompts. 
• Today, Adobe released two AI capabilities powered by Firefly into Lightroom — Generative Remove and Lens Blur presets.
• Users can also make changes with the all-new Lightroom mobile editing experience. 
• Adobe Lightroom subscriptions start at $9.99 a month at Adobe.

Over the last couple of years, Adobe has pushed even further into the AI space with its impressive Adobe Firefly machine learning model. It has helped integrate generative AI tools into various Adobe programs including Photoshop. Today, the creative software company announced several things, chief among which is that two Firefly-powered generative AI tools are coming to Lightroom in the form of Generative Remove and all-new Lens Blur presets. New Lightroom mobile editing capabilities also allow users to make adjustments to their pictures anywhere, right from their phones. 

Here's everything announced by Adobe today:

• Generative Remove: Lightroom users can easily select a person or object in an image and then have Firefly remove the designated selection before filling that space in believably.
• Lens Blur presets: These presets allow people to quickly blur the backgrounds of images in a single click by selecting from different blur presets. The idea behind Lens Blur presets, is that blurring the background draws more attention to the main focus of an image. 
• Tethering support for new cameras: This includes support for Sony Digital cameras (LINK) so that individuals and creative groups can work more efficiently and can more easily collaborate.
• HDR Optimization: Allows Lightroom users to add a fuller overall look to their images with increased color, contrast, and highlights. 
• Lightroom’s all-new mobile editing: You can manage your photo libraries and make edits to your images right from your phone, making the program more convenient and easy to use on the go. 

According to Adobe, Firefly has been very popular since its public launch and "has been used to generate over 8 billion images worldwide across Adobe creative tools since its initial debut in March 2023." For those who might not know, Adobe prides itself on having responsible AI ethics and states that Firefly was specifically "trained on licensed content, like Adobe Stock," so it's safe to use generated work for commercial use. 

Professional-looking edits made easier with AI

I've been taking advantage of Adobe's various AI capabilities since I first started using the Creative Suite back in 2009. But the development and integration of Adobe Firefly into the company's other programs has really helped Adobe step up its AI game. Back in my day, I relied heavily on Content-Aware Fill to expand upon images or replace unwanted objects. But today, Firefly allows users to remove selected portions and generate far more realistic replacement imagery than ever before. It will be a game changer for Lightroom users who have near-perfect images with distracting objects in the foregrounds or backgrounds.

Obviously, the moral discussion around generative AI has stopped many creatives from using generative AI images services like Midjourney and DALL-E. But knowing that Adobe has trained its own generative AI machine learning model on licensed work makes it a guilt-free choice. 

Additionally, the most important distinction between  Adobe Firefly integration into Lightroom versus other generative AI models is that Firefly's generative AI capabilities feel more like a tool to be wielded by a creator rather than a program that completely does its own thing. You can have direct say over what gets done and where. If you haven't checked out the editing abilities made possible through Adobe Firefly, I highly suggest opening Lightroom or Photoshop and seeing just how stunning their editing effects can be. 

What you need to know

• Microsoft's big AI event has debuted new Copilot features, alongside new Surface products. 
• Microsoft's new suite of AI PCs will process AI queries on-device, to address privacy concerns. 
• To that end, the firm is leveraging the new Snapdragon X Elite from Qualcomm to produce a range of new AI PCs, including the latest Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. 
• Previous versions of Windows on Arm, such as that found in the Surface Pro X, were without support from a major player, but that's about to change. 
• Adobe has pledged to finally bring its full suite of apps, including Adobe Premier Pro, to the Windows on Arm effort. 

I love my Surface Pro X. It's my fanless travel buddy that I take on work trips that don't warrant taking my full-blown Razer Blade 16 to. However, it undoubtedly has its downsides. 

The Surface Pro X is powered by Microsoft's own Arm-based SoC, and as such, many Windows applications are merely emulated on the OS, rather than native. For the most part, it's fine. I just use web apps for the vast majority of what I use my travel Pro X for, and while some apps like Slack can be laggy to use, it gets the job done. 

The biggest downside beyond general performance, however, is compatibility. Indeed, if an app is designed to run on Arm natively, it needs to be emulated, since they expect to be running on an x86 environment typical of Intel and AMD architectures. One notable player opted to block most of their apps entirely on the Windows on Arm product line, owing to potential headaches from emulation. 

This fact alone made the Windows on Arm product line-up a total no-go for many, many industries and creative individuals. I am of course, talking about Adobe Suite. 

Adobe's adoption of Windows on Arm has been generally slow, but not exactly non-existent. A few of their apps are built natively for Arm, including Photoshop, but at today's big Microsoft AI and Surface event, Adobe pledged broader support. 

Announcing during the event, Adobe said that it's full range of apps is coming "soon" to Microsoft's new AI PC contingent, generally powered by the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. That includes Adobe Premier Pro, which up until now, has required an x86 processor to run on a Windows-based device. 

There are already alternatives to high-end video editing on Windows on Arm, including DaVinci Resolve. But many (myself included) don't necessarily want to learn a new program and upend their workflow to adopt new silicon. Thankfully, Adobe is not forcing those interested in Windows on Arm to make a choice. 

"Together with Adobe, we are thrilled to announce Adobe’s flagship apps are coming to Copilot+ PCs, including Photoshop, Lightroom and Express – available today," Microsoft said. "Illustrator, Premiere Pro and more are coming this summer. And we’re continuing to partner to optimize AI in these apps for the NPU. For Adobe Creative Cloud customers, they will benefit from the full performance advantages of Copilot+ PCs to express their creativity faster than ever before."

NPU in this instance refers to the new Neural Processing Units Microsoft is incorporating into new AI PCs. Oftentimes, neural workflows are handled on graphics cards or CPUs on today's laptops, but they're more likely to be offloaded to the cloud at Adobe or Microsoft's headquarters. I use Adobe Photoshop's generative AI expand feature to adjust photographs for use on Windows Central articles sometimes, and it takes a little while because it sends the data up to Adobe's cloud servers first. You can do it on-device today, but using these dedicated NPU chips should be more effective and producing similar results at Adobe's full cloud array. 

Adobe finds its new Arm abode

When companies like Apple or Microsoft demonstrate new platforms, it's usually followed with comments from Adobe. While great alternatives exist for Adobe Animate, Premier, or Photoshop, Adobe's suite remains the industry standard. Not having full Adobe support on Windows on Arm would preclude thousands of creative individuals and even entire industries from even considering a Copilot+ AI PC or the sexy new Surface Pro 11th Edition, so this is a huge boost for the platform in general. 

With all the hype revolving around the Snapdragon X Elite SoC, one has to wonder how Intel will fight back. The power efficiency of the Snapdragon X Elite, coupled with support from headline acts like Adobe, really does make Intel seem old fashioned right now. The next-gen Intel suite is on the way, though, and has its sights firmly set on the Snapdragon X Elite range. Competition is heating up. 

Adobe's software remains some of the most recognizable in the world, with many Windows devices pre-loaded with popular staples like Acrobat Reader to handle the dominating .PDF file type. Even its broader Creative Cloud suite contains multiple chart-topping apps like Photoshop and Premiere Pro, which compete in the professional sector as the primary choice for imagery and video projects.

With such a substantial position in the industry, it's reasonable to expect Adobe to support as many platforms and operating systems as possible, widen its user base, and remain dominant in each category. That's certainly the case for x86-64 Windows 11 PCs and macOS devices running Apple Silicon chips, but what about Windows on Arm? I inspected Adobe's offerings of ARM-native apps and any plans to adapt to a game-changing generation of Apple-busting Snapdragon X chips.

Do any Adobe apps run natively on ARM?

Adobe's native ARM64 support starts and ends with Photoshop and Lightroom, though that doesn't exclude the rest of its Creative Cloud suite from running on ARM-based Windows devices via x86-64 emulation. Although Photoshop is arguably the most widely recognized software by hobbyists and professionals who adore its powerful image editing toolkit, it's still a slim offering alongside Lightroom, the fine-tuning app aimed at photographers.

However, while Adobe builds an ARM-native version of Photoshop for compatible Windows devices like my second-hand Surface Pro X, it doesn't include complete feature parity with the x86-64 version built for desktop processors from Intel and AMD. Adobe itself has always been clear about the known differences and limitations of its ARM-native Photoshop build, even if it has generally neglected to update users on potential fixes, with February 15, 2022, listed as the last update.

Are native ARM apps a priority for Adobe?

Rebuilding a native ARM version of an app varies in complexity, and it could be challenging to allocate resources to its development for a behemoth suite like Adobe's Creative Cloud. The current user base is still relatively small compared to x86-64 users on traditional Windows PCs, though a potentially gigantic shift in ARM adoption is on the horizon since Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips revealed benchmark results that bested everything we'd tested from Intel and AMD up to that point.

The absolute highest-end performance gains from the new Snapdragon X Elite and its more affordable counterpart, the Snapdragon X Plus chips, will require ARM-native builds of Windows apps. However, Qualcomm boasts that its investment in x64 emulation means that through relatively gigantic advancements in sheer computing power, so in theory, running the traditional x86-64 versions of other Adobe apps like Illustrator and Premiere Pro should end up performing close to what we consider a 'native experience' on Snapdragon X devices anyway.

Will Snapdragon X PCs appeal to Adobe users?

If Adobe doesn't expand its suite with more ARM-native versions of its apps, it could soon fall victim to a rise in competitors who will. For example, the popular video editor and color correction suite DaVinci Resolve is coming to Windows on Arm to match its current offerings on ARM-powered Apple devices, though pricing will undoubtedly vary wildly between brands.

The open-source competitor to Photoshop, GIMP, already offers an ARM-native version of its free image editing suite. Its stock feature set might lack some features found in Adobe's paid software, but plugins for AI image generation, like OpenVINO from Intel, can help it catch up.

With alternatives potentially out-performing Adobe's world-class apps on a range of Snapdragon X-powered Windows laptops from several OEMs set to release throughout the year, the risks of ignoring ARM64 architecture and its benefits to increased battery life and overall power efficiency could be detrimental to Adobe's user retention. Qualcomm's target audience undoubtedly includes creative users, but whether Adobe will follow through on its promises to expand ARM support remains to be seen:

"We are working to ensure that our other apps run natively on these devices, but don't have release dates for all our apps yet." —  Adobe, 13 Dec. 2022

As a regular Photoshop user and recent ARM evangelist (compatibility is better than you remember, honest), I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that Adobe commits extra funding to build ARM-native versions of its other killer apps. Any traveling creatives needing intensive image or video edits know that many laptops can't offer the battery life to compete, but upcoming Snapdragon X devices seem ridiculously capable of changing that, and I can't wait. Let's just hope that Adobe has something cooking behind the scenes to take advantage of a potential Windows on Arm renaissance.

What you need to know

• During NAB 2024, Adobe announced that Premiere Pro will be receiving new generative AI tools made using the Firefly AI model.
• Object Addition, Object Removal, Generative Extend, and Text to Video will roll out sometime this year to make it easier for people of all skill levels to work more efficiently with the video editing software.
• Adobe also stated that third-party generative AI plugins for third-party programs like  OpenAI, Lika Labs, and Runway will continue to be used within Premiere Pro.
• As part of these generative AI announcements, Adobe emphasized its responsible AI focus that centers around ethical training for commercial use.

Adobe has been utilizing AI for over a decade, but recently it has been able to bring more generative AI features to people of all skill levels. During NAB 2024 (National Association of Broadcasters), Adobe announced that four additional generative AI features will be coming to Adobe Premiere Pro — Object Addition, Object Removal, Generative Extend, and Text to Video. Meanwhile, AI-based audio features will start shipping for the video editing software in May. Premiere Pro access can be purchased with a Creative Cloud subscription. 

Here's a brief explanation for each of these new AI tools coming to Premiere Pro: 

• Object addition: Allows users to add an effect or object to the video. For instance, this can be used to change the color of a shirt or even add imagery that wasn't there before to a video clip. As an example, Adobe showed a heist scene in which a case full of diamonds was edited to include a far heftier pile of gems. 
• Object Removal: There are instances when things in the background detract from a clip, but this tool will allow people to remove distracting objects. Adobe reps referred to the infamous Game of Thrones mess up by saying, this tool could help you remove a Starbucks cup on a period piece or maybe get rid of a dipping boom mic that distracts from an otherwise perfect shot. It's fast too, where object detection can select the whole item and then you can easily remove that item from a whole clip. 
• Generative Extend: Sometimes, you might find that you want a clip to last just a little bit longer or have a little more time before the main sequence and that's what this tool is for. It generates entirely new frames at the beginning or ending of a clip.
• Text to Video: This allows users to enter in text prompts and then create new footage right from within Premiere Pro. 

“Adobe is reimagining every step of video creation and production workflow to give creators new power and flexibility to realize their vision,” said Ashley Still, Senior Vice President, Creative Product Group at Adobe. “By bringing generative AI innovations deep into core Premiere Pro workflows, we are solving real pain points that video editors experience every day, while giving them more space to focus on their craft."

An AI powered Enhance Speech tool has been in effect within Premiere Pro since February, but now, additional AI-powered audio features are coming to this video editing software. These new tools include: 

• Interactive fade handles: Editors can create custom audio transitions faster than ever by simply dragging clip handles to create audio fades. 
• New Essential Sound badge with audio category tagging: AI automatically tags audio clips as dialogue, music, sound effects or ambience, and adds a new icon so editors get one-click, instant access to the right controls for the job.
• Effect badges: New visual indicators make it easy to see which clips have effects, quickly add new ones, and automatically open effect parameters right from the sequence. 
• Redesigned waveforms in the timeline: Waveforms intelligently resize as the track height changes on clips, while gorgeous new colors make sequences easier to read.

Adobe clarifies that these generative AI features were developed in the Adobe Firefly AI model, which launched a little over a year ago. The company also emphasizes that it is commited to creating "ethically produced generative AI" services intended for all skill levels.

As part of providing a convenient service, Adobe explained its "open approach to AI models." In other words, Adobe plans to continue to allow third-party generative tools and models to be used as plugins with Adobe programs. Specific third-party AI software includes OpenAI Sora, Pika Labs Pika, Runway Gen-2. Anything deemed commercially safe to use will be marked with a green checkmark. Adobe states this approach will continue to support a growing ecosystem of AI models in order to allow customers to create whatever they want in Adobe applications.

Our creative AI future

There are a lot of concerns surrounding AI and art creation but when used responsibly, generative AI can be used as a tool to enhance your work rather than something that does all of the work without a human really doing anything. That's exactly what Adobe is working to achieve with its continued focus on AI updates within programs like Premiere Pro. You'll just need a Creative Cloud subscription in order to access it. 

The latest AI updates will make it far easier to perfect each scene by quickly allowing photo editors to get rid of distracting things within a scene or enhance them in ways that make the clip better. That way, you don't have to go back and reshoot everything just because a small aspect of the shot didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. 

What you need to know

• Adobe announced that the latest version of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements both feature new AI editing abilities. 
• There are also additional guided edits to help make the process of adding specific effects easier for users in Photoshop Elements. 
• Premiere Elements can help match color and tone between clips to make videos mesh together better.

It's that time of the year once more when Adobe releases the latest versions of its simplified photo and video editing programs. This time around, both Photoshop Elements 2024 and Premiere Elements 2024 offer brand-new AI-powered features to help make the creative process faster and easier for users. 

What's new in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2024

• Color and tone matching: You can adjust the hue, brightness, tone, and saturation of photos and videos via presets and can even make slight adjustments to get things looking the way you want.
• Easier background swapping/enhancing: Adobe Sensei helps make selecting backgrounds and sky easier so you can swap selected areas out or add effects more easily and believably. 
• Additional Guided Edits: There are now a total of 62 guided edits to help you quickly apply cool effects to your media. 
  • Stylized text options: Make your text look better with various alignment options as well as the ability to warp text or apply textures, gradients, and patterns for an interesting effect.
  • Replace Background Guided Edit: Additional backgrounds are available to choose from when swapping out backgrounds in your photos. 

• Photo Reels: You can create quick MP4s or GIFs that showcase your photos with effects, graphics, and text to help them pop. 
• Free access to Adobe Stock photos: Thousands of professional photos, graphics, and stylized quotes can be inserted into your projects to enhance your work. 
• Additional one-Click Quick Actions: You can now smooth skin, dehaze imagery, add blur, remove backgrounds, and more with just a single click. 
• Smooth out pixelated imagery: Adobe Sensei helps remove distracting artifacts from compressed JPEGs to get photos to look smooth and beautiful. 
• New Artistic Effects: Give your projects a cool look with additional effects that are inspired by famous works and artists. This ability is also made possible with Adobe Sensei.

• Additional UI options: Users can now choose between light or dark mode and can also adjust the look of the font, icons, and other aspects.
• Overlays and patterns in the web companion app: Add a dynamic look to your photos and videos within the web companion app, which can now add overlays and patterns to your work.
• One-Click fixes on mobile: You can now apply more complicated edits to your photos from the mobile app with just the tap of a button. This includes things like removing backgrounds, fixing lighting, and more. It's also easier to stay organized as additional files and folders can be accessed from the mobile app. 
• Auto-sync photos and videos: The media you upload syncs across the mobile app, the web app, and Elements Organizer.

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What's new in Adobe Premiere Elements 2024

• Color and tone matching: You can adjust the hue, brightness, tone, and saturation of photos and videos via presets and can even make slight adjustments to get things looking the way you want. 
• Automatic Highlight Reels: By utilizing the power of AI, the software can automatically zoom in or focus on parts of your videos where the most action is occurring.
• More Audio Effects: Adding the right sounds for the perfect listening experience is now easier with the addition of the Vocal Enhancer, DeHummer, and Reverb audio effects.
• New Graphics: Spicing up your videos and photos just got a whole lot easier with visuals that help draw attention to specific areas.

• Additional UI options: Users can now choose between light or dark mode and can also adjust the look of the font, icons, and other aspects.
• Browser access: You can access Premiere Elements 2024 via the web companion app from any laptop or desktop to make edits or share with other users. 
• Mobile app update: Interact with the software by uploading images and videos right from your phone and then editing them. This also works between the web companion app and the mobile version. 
• Auto-sync photos and videos: The media you upload syncs across the mobile app, the web app, and Elements Organizer.

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Photoshop Elements 2024 and Premiere Elements 2024: System requirements

Photoshop Elements 2024 System Requirements (Windows)

• Intel 6th Generation or newer processor or AMD equivalent with SSE4.1 support
• Microsoft Windows 10 (version 22H2) or Windows 11 (version 22H2), 64-bit versions only; Windows 7, Windows 8.1 not supported
• 8GB of RAM
• 8GB of available hard-disk space to install application; additional space required for downloading online content and for temporary files during product installation and usage (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices)
• 1280x800 display resolution (at 100% scale factor)
• Microsoft DirectX 12 compatible display driver
• Internet connection required for product activation and download of features and online content

Premiere Elements 2024 System Requirements (Windows)

• Intel 6th Generation or newer processor or AMD equivalent with SSE4.1 support
• Microsoft Windows 10 (version 22H2) or Windows 11 (version 22H2), 64-bit versions only; Windows 7,Windows 8.1 not supported
• 8GB of RAM
• 5GB of available hard-disk space to install application; additional space required for downloading onlinecontent and for temporary files during product installation and usage (cannot install on a volume thatuses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices)
• 1280x800 display resolution (at 100% scale factor)
• Microsoft DirectX 12 compatible sound and display driver
• Windows Media Player (required if importing Windows Media files)

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Windows Central's take

When software gets released once a year like clockwork, it's hard to know if the improvements made to the latest version warrant a new purchase. Whether or not you should pull the trigger and grab the latest Photoshop Elements 2024 and/or Premiere Elements 2024 depends on what programs you're currently using and what you use them for. 

This year's addition of more AI abilities does make for a compelling case to purchase the latest 2024 programs, but only if these features are something you'll be using. If your current versions of these programs are a few years old then it could definitely be a great time to upgrade. 

Adobe has always been at the forefront of AI features with its powerful Adobe Sensei software, however, this year the company's focus on generative AI via Firefly has really helped propel its various programs into the future. Of course, Adobe will continue to add AI features into its software as time goes on, especially as Adobe Sensei and Firefly continue to improve even further. So, if not this year, it will probably be a good idea to upgrade or purchase upcoming versions of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements if you want to stay current and with the most convenient editing options.

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It's back to school season, and as a student, you must ensure you're equipped with all the necessary skills and tips to make your learning experience a breeze. 

Learning revolves around assignments and reviewing hundreds of documents and PDFs issued by the course facilitator to serve as additional resources building upon what was taught in class.

Admittedly, the process can be daunting and tedious, especially if you're signed up for a vigorous program, translating to double the workload. We've already shared several tips and tricks to help you get started with back to school. And now, Adobe Acrobat shared five PDF tips to help students get the most out of PDF textbooks.

Read Aloud 

How we interact with learning material has evolved, making the process simpler and enjoyable. Rather than flipping through hundreds of pages for your coursework, Adobe Acrobat ships with a neat feature dubbed Read Aloud. 

And just as the name suggests, the feature lets you convert your PDF textbook to an audiobook with the text-to-speech function. Essentially, the feature borrows heavily from Microsoft Edge's Read Aloud feature. I listed it as one of the main reasons I use Microsoft Edge as my default browser on Windows, citing its contribution and importance to my performance index and overall productivity while at work.

What's more, Adobe Acrobat features a wide array of voice options you can select from based on your preference. You can skip to the next or previous paragraph using the skip button and even hasten the reading speed.

Highlight key points

Your performance in exams directly correlates with how well-prepared you are for it. You must study for the exams to ensure you've covered all the bases. 

However, this can be a tedious task, especially if you have to go through a lot of reading material. Luckily, Adobe Acrobat ships with a nifty feature that lets you highlight key points as you go through the learning material. This makes the revision process a breeze in the sense that you can easily pinpoint what you need to study. 

Likewise, you can use the feature to highlight points you don't understand clearly and want to seek clarification from your counterparts and course facilitator later.  

Easy find

To complement the highlight feature, Adobe also sports a search feature that lets you find specific terms within a document to make learning easier. You won't have to scroll through hundreds of pages to find a specific section within the document. 

To leverage this capability, click the magnifying glass in the top right or use Ctrl + F to open the search option.

PDF comments

Studies show that notetaking while studying enhances your understanding significantly. Adobe understands this premise, which is why it lets you take notes as you go by in the form of comments.

It's worth noting that the comments are sorted by page number to ensure that you quickly refer to the original source for additional information or clarification on specific points, which makes the studying process easier.  

Interactive note-taking sessions

Adobe states that its PDF experience is perfect for group assignments and projects. You can share PDF textbooks with multiple people using the share button. As such, taking notes collaboratively or having group study sessions is easier.

This goes a long way to ensure you get things done while saving time. Notably, besides the free 

Adobe Acrobat elevating the learning curve

Evidently, with a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat, your learning process will be significantly enhanced. Allowing you to make the most out of the learning resources shared in class. 

Not forgetting that Microsoft Edge's built-in PDF reader is powered by Adobe Acrobat technology, which allows users to leverage its capabilities directly within the browser, thus enhancing convenience and productivity. 

Notably, besides the free option, users seeking more sophisticated capabilities in a PDF reader, such as turning paper documents into editable PDFs, protecting PDF files with passwords, storing and sharing files online with access across devices, and more, can opt to go for the Acrobat Pro or Acrobat PDF Pack tiers which go for $19.99/mo and $119.88/yr respectively. You can head to Adobe Acrobat's plan and pricing page for more information on pricing and the capabilities supported on each tier.

What you need to know

• Adobe Firefly is a powerful generative AI software that can create imagery, text effects, and more via text prompts.
• As of today, the Firefly beta is now integrated into Adobe Express for all to utilize. This is a program which is included in most Creative Cloud plans. 
• Express is a creative software designed to be very easy for all skill levels and makes it possible to create anything from logos, TikToks, reels, flyers, and more. 

Earlier this year, Adobe unveiled its generative AI software, Firefly, and has been slowly rolling it out to various programs within the Creative Cloud, including Adobe Express. Express is an intuitive all-in-one editor that makes it so people of any skill level can touch up images, create professional-looking banners, design social media posts, and even produce short videos with ease. As of today, the Firefly beta is now available to all Express users, which opens it up to a huge audience since Express is included in most Creative Cloud plans.

Integrated into Express, the addition of Firefly makes it far easier for users to generate custom images and text effects for their projects within just a few minutes or perform other quick edits. Express is a very popular tool with millions of global users, so the fact that Firefly's text prompts work in 100 languages is very important. Additionally, Adobe states that everything made in the program is "designed to be safe for commercial use," making it a very safe software for companies to utilize.  

“With groundbreaking innovations and generative AI at the core of Express, we’re empowering an ever-expanding user base with an AI-first, all-in-one tool that makes content creation fast, easy and fun,” said Govind Balakrishnan, senior vice president, Adobe Express and Digital Media Services at Adobe. “The all-new Express is revolutionizing how people turn ideas into stunning content and we’re just getting started with exciting innovations across image creation, design, video, audio, PDFs and more still to come.” 

As officially listed by Adobe, here are the latest innovations that this change brings to Express.

• New all-in-one editor gives users the ability to make high-impact design elements, engaging videos and images, stunning PDFs, animation and standout content ready for Instagram, TikTok and other social channels and platforms.
• Firefly integrated into Express makes it possible to quickly generate custom images and text effects from text prompts in over 100 languages and designed to be safe for commercial use. 
• Deep workflows with Creative Cloud apps allow users to easily access, edit and work with creative assets from Photoshop and Illustrator directly within Express, or add linked files that always stay in sync across apps.
• New video, multiple page templates and design elements bring even more inspiration to the largest collection of beautiful, high-quality content, now with nearly 200 million assets including video and design templates, royalty-free Adobe Stock images, video and audio assets, almost 22,000 fonts, plus more icons, backgrounds and shapes. 
• PDF support in the new all-in-one editor makes it even easier to import, edit and enhance documents to create visually stunning PDFs. 
• More AI-power helps creators to take the guesswork out of design, and quickly find the perfect addition to content or get personalized template recommendations that fit unique styles, to create social media posts, videos, posters, flyers and more.
• Quick actions like remove background in images and videos, animate a character using just audio, convert to GIF and edit PDFs, makes it even easier to create standout content quickly and simply.
• Real-time co-editing and seamless review and commenting capabilities add speed to the creation process. 
• Animations like Fade In, Pop, Flicker, Bungee bring text, photos, videos and assets to life in a new way. With Animate from Audio, powered by Adobe Character Animator, watch characters come to life with lips and gestures syncing to recorded dialogue.

Windows Central's take

Whether we like it or not, generative AI is our future. Companies and individuals will either need to embrace it or get left behind as the rest of the world moves forward. The key difference with Adobe's utilization of its Firefly generative AI is that the focus is on helping people create their own projects rather than simply having a server produce everything for you. This maintains a human element to the creation process and allows for more minute control than what is currently provided by many other generative AI programs out there. 

Express is intended to be the one-stop shop where people of any skill level can work on creative projects without the daunting aspect of having to learn more complicated programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Premiere Pro. It's very intuitive but also well designed so that users can create professional looking finished projects in a variety of areas.

Obviously, there has been a lot of controversy in the last two years over allowing AI chatbots and AI image creators to produce work. These arguments are valid since many AI generators do not disclose where they pull their library of images or databases of knowledge from. Some of the most popular programs outright plagiarize the written word or steal imagery from artists. However, you can feel a little better using Firefly since it pulls from Adobe's own stock of imagery. That, plus the human element that Express requires in order to create projects, keeps Adobe Express with the integrated Firefly beta on more venerated ground. 

What you need to know

• Today is the first day of Adobe Summit EMEA 2023, a Digital Experience Conference held in London.
• Adobe announced that Adobe Firefly Generative AI is getting integrated into Adobe Express. 
• This will make it possible for Adobe Express users to create projects even faster and more easily than before.
• PDF support has also been added to Adobe Express allowing users to import, edit, and make changes to these types of documents.

To start off the Adobe Summit 2023 Digital Experience Conference being held in London this week, Adobe announced that Adobe Firefly, its Generative AI program, is getting integrated directly into a beta version of Adobe Express. 

For those who might not know, Adobe Express, which used to be known as Adobe Spark, is a simplified all-in-one content creation tool that allows users to quickly create social media posts, logos, banners, and much more with its mixture of tools. It can handle simple photo and video editing as well as layout design as explained by Adobe's Digital Media Business president, David Wadhwani.

“The new release of Adobe Express brings together technology from Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and Acrobat with our Firefly generative AI models into a fun and easy web application experience allowing everyone, from individuals to large organizations to create content that stands out,” Wadhwani stated. “Creators can now make stunning videos, designs and documents faster than ever before and our seamless workflows with our flagship applications give Creative Cloud subscribers even more control over the creative process.”

Now, this brand new Adobe Firefly integration into Express will make it possible for users to quickly add text effects by typing the text they want into a project and then describing what they want the text to look like in the Generate command box. Generative Fill, which can create any image based on a text prompt, is currently not available within Express, but it likely will come later.

It was also announced that PDF support has also been added to Adobe Express, making it easier for users to import, edit, and make changes to these documents. Since Express already integrates into Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Experience Manager, this PDF support will make it even easier than before for real-time collaboration among teams regardless of what Adobe program they are using.

This news comes on the heels of Adobe announcing that it had partnered with Google Bard to bring Firefly and Express to Google's conversational AI service in the near future. It's clear that the company intends to bring its latest AI Generative technologies to as many of its programs as possible to increase their value and make the creation process even easier.

Additional Innovations in Adobe Express

Here are the other changes that Adobe has officially stated will be coming to Adobe Express:

• New all-in-one editor gives users the ability to make high-impact design elements, engaging video and images, stunning PDFs, animation, and standout content ready for Instagram, TikTok and all their favorite channels and platforms. 
• Firefly integrated into Express makes it possible to generate custom images and text effects from just a description, using Text to Image and Text Effects features. 
• New video, multiple page templates, and design elements bring even more inspiration to the largest collection of beautiful, high-quality content, now with nearly 200 million assets including video and design templates, royalty-free Adobe Stock images, video and audio assets, almost 22,000 fonts, plus more icons, backgrounds, and shapes. 
• PDF support in the new all-in-one editor makes it even easier to import, edit and enhance documents to create visually stunning PDFs.  
• More AI-power helps creators to take the guesswork out of design, and quickly find the perfect addition to content or get personalized template recommendations that fit unique styles, to create social media posts, videos, posters, flyers and more. 
• Quick actions like remove background in images and videos, animate a character using just audio, convert to GIF, and edit PDFs, makes it even easier to create standout content quickly and simply. 
• Integration with Experience Manager Assets streamlines content planning, creation, collaborative review, distribution, and analysis, ultimately accelerating content velocity across an organization. 
• Real-time collaboration and seamless review and commenting capabilities add speed to the creation process. Easily access, edit, and work with creative assets from Photoshop and Illustrator directly within Express, or add linked files that always stay in sync across apps. 
• Animations like Fade In, Pop, Flicker, Bungee bring text, photos, videos, and assets to life in a new way. With Animate from Audio, powered by Adobe Character Animator, watch characters come to life with lips and gestures syncing to recorded dialogue.

What you need to know

• Adobe Firefly is the creative software company's AI generative program. 
• Today, Adobe announced that Firefly has been integrated into Photoshop allowing for Generative Fill, which lets users make edits, extend images, or remove objects using word prompts.
• Firefly's generative AI abilities will continue to be integrated into Adobe's Creative Cloud programs going forward.

Today, Adobe announced that Adobe Firefly is now integrated into Photoshop, making it so that users can quickly make non-destructive AI-generated edits and text effects to their work via text prompts (much like Bing Image Creator but with far more control in a creative capacity). 

This news comes six weeks after Adobe Firefly launched in a closed beta allowing those who were given access to check out the software company's brand-new AI generative program. Its purpose is to be a tool to help creators produce their work more conveniently rather than simply making everything for them. 

Chief among Adobe Firefly's integrative abilities with Photoshop is Generative Fill, which quickly adds, extends, or removes imagery from an image after a user gives commands via text prompts. The results are believable as the program "automatically matches perspective, lighting and style of images to enable users to achieve astounding results while reducing tedious tasks." 

For instance, widening an image of a family at a park beyond the scope of the original photo and then selecting that new area and typing "jungle gym" into the generative text prompt box should fill in that added space with a believable play area as well as trees and grass that match the original photo's surroundings. Bringing Firefly into Photoshop should make the photo editing software easier for home users, creatives, and businesses to use it. 

“By integrating Firefly directly into workflows as a creative co-pilot, Adobe is accelerating ideation, exploration and production for all of our customers,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president, Digital Media at Adobe. “Generative Fill combines the speed and ease of generative AI with the power and precision of Photoshop, empowering customers to bring their visions to life at the speed of their imaginations.”

As stated in Adobe's official announcement, Generative Fill accomplishes these speedy creative workflows by utilizing several things:

• Powered by Firefly: Firefly is designed to generate images that are safe for commercial use and is trained on Adobe Stock’s hundreds of millions of professional-grade, licensed, high-resolution images, helping ensure Firefly won’t generate content based on other peoples’ or brands’ intellectual property (IP).
• Magically leap from idea to image, with simple text prompts: Add, extend or remove content from images to achieve astounding results.
• Edit non-destructively: Create newly generated content in generative layers, enabling you to rapidly iterate through a myriad of creative possibilities and reverse the effects when you want, without impacting your original image.
• Create at a transformative rate: Experiment with off-the-wall ideas, ideate different concepts and produce boundless variations of high-quality content as fast as you can type.
• Available as a web tool: Generative Fill is also available as a new module in the Firefly beta for users interested in testing the new capabilities on the web.

The ethical nature of AI generative programs has been called into question a lot recently. The best AI image generators all rely on vast libraries of images in order to generate visuals, many of which have been added without artist's consent. Being aware of this and wanting to "ensure content and data transparency" Adobe explained that Generative Fill incorporates Content Credentials (developed by Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative). This way, people always know if art made using Adobe software was created by a human, if it was completely created via AI generator, or if it incorporates AI edits of any kind. 

This is all part of a plan to incorporate Adobe Firefly's AI generative abilities into other Creative Cloud programs going forward. Additional announcements regarding Firefly integration will undoubtedly come in the future. 

Windows Central's take

With its renewed focus on AI generative abilities, Adobe is finding a way to not only maintain its position as a relevant creative software company but is also ensuring its place above its generative AI image competitors. The thing most AI image generators lack is editing abilities, but Adobe is coming at the AI generator industry with powerful editing options that it has been building upon for decades. 

Additionally, this software company has long utilized AI technology by incorporating Adobe Sensei into Creative Cloud to allow for convenient, time-saving (and AI-assisted) edits. So really, adding generative AI to its repertoire isn't jumping on a trend but is really just the next obvious step for the company. However, Firefly takes things several steps further allowing for more complicated tasks like vector recoloring and Generative Fill to help make it easier for creators to alter their work while still keeping control over it. This is bound to make the software more appealing to beginners and will greatly enhance Photoshop's powerful editing options.

On another note, if you're already familiar with Photoshop, you might be wondering how Generative Fill differs from Content-Aware Fill. I'm happy to explain. Content-Aware Fill is somewhat like a superpowered healing tool that removes a selected area and then fills it back in by pulling visual data from the image. For instance, removing ugly telephone lines from the background of a photo and automatically patching the area up with sky samplings found around the selected area. 

Generative Fill, on the other hand, gives users far more control over what replaces the removed section of the image. As an example, you could select that ugly telephone pole and then type "flying red dragon" into the generative prompt box and Photoshop (assisted by Firefly) would remove the pole and put a dragon in the same space that was selected. It opens up so many new possibilities and since Firefly generates visuals by pulling from Adobe stock images, you don't have to worry as much about where the image references are coming from. 

Bing Image Creator has a lot going for it. It's an impressive AI image generator that quickly creates different visual styles based on the combination of prompts it receives. And, of course, one of its biggest attractions is that anyone with a Microsoft account can use it for free. However, Microsoft's AI image generator has some sizable limitations compared to other AI alternatives — initial prompt options are missing entirely, and there aren't any editing options either.

After spending some time with the Adobe Firefly beta, the in-house AI image generator from the creative software giant, I can't help but see several ways in which Adobe is implementing controls far better than Microsoft.

Half the battle of using an AI image generator effectively is knowing what descriptive words and design terms to use. Ironically, while Adobe Firefly targets creative types, its vast options panel makes it easier for non-artists to use. You don't have to know any industry-standard art terms; just click on the available options to make changes and learn what they mean as you see the results.

Using Bing Image Creator is straightforward on mobile and easily accessible. However, if it aims to be the best AI image generator out there, it needs to take these cues from Adobe Firefly and create a control interface that allows people to alter generated images.

What Bing Image Creator can learn from Adobe Firefly

Both Bing Chat's Image Creator and Adobe Firefly present straightforward and clean interfaces for prompts. In both cases, providing more details in the prompt makes it more likely for either AI generator to pump out images that align with what a user envisions. But it's after the initial prompt that Firefly really shines. 

As is the common practice, Adobe Firefly generates four images based on a prompt, but then a bunch of extra options appear in a panel along with these images. From here, I can easily choose which aspect ratio I want these pictures to be in from a list, the art style I'm looking for, any color and tone specifics I want to see, plus lighting and composition details. I'm not stuck with the 1:1 aspect ratio so common to AI image generators and have far more control over tweaking what was initially generated. I can even start a brand new prompt and include specific options right from this window.

If Bing Image Creator added these specific style, coloring, composition, lighting, and tone tools, it would become a whole lot easier to use. Not to mention, it would teach people more design terms to make them better AI image generator users in the process.

Another lovely Firefly aspect Bing Image Creator should learn from is style comparisons. For instance, I can jump between selecting Firefly's Watercolor or Pixel Art style options and see the same images (albeit with slight changes) displayed in these styles. It allows me to compare the effects on the same overall composition and determine what looks I like best. In comparison, Bing Image Creator currently generates wildly different images each time it receives the same prompt, so it's impossible to attempt to tweak a concept you like or even to get the same result twice. 

It is worth noting that some of Firefly's options will change the images drastically and can replace an image composition you might have liked. It's especially true when changing the aspect ratio and composition, but it can also happen when making other changes. It's probably why some options require me to click the Refresh button on the prompt box before their effects apply to the images.

Now, Firefly would be better if it implemented the same Recent section that Bing Image Creator does or at least allowed users to save their favorite images to their account. For now, it's essential to download and save any images you really like as you come across them. Even Bing Image Creator only remembers 20 recent AI image prompts, so your older generations can get lost eventually. Microsoft could improve the experience significantly if it were to add some sort of favorites library to Bing Image Creator so users can keep their favorite generated images in one place. 

Improvements for the future

Bing Image Creator and Adobe Firefly are still in somewhat early development and will likely see colossal changes within the next few years. During these critical early days, developers of AI image generators need to learn from each other and work to implement the best user experiences they can, or else they will be left behind. 

Bing Image Creator is already an impressive tool that has attracted many peoples' attention with its subscription-less availability and simple interface for creating images on Edge. However, its lack of initial design options and editing controls really hamper it at the moment. It should take a page out of Adobe Firefly's book and add specific design controls to help both novice and expert users get the most out of the experience. 

NAB Show 2023 (Nation Association of Broadcasters) has kicked off in Las Vegas with several companies showing off their latest hardware and software updates at the annual trade show. Adobe usually has a powerful presence at these conventions, and this year is no different. 

The creative software company has revealed several updates coming to After Effects, Frame.io, and Premiere Pro this year. These changes will make the programs easier to use for both individuals and teams. 

Premiere Pro gets auto tone mapping and text-based editing

To kick things off, Adobe announced that its video editor, Premiere Pro, has been streamlined to make the video editing process even faster and more convenient than ever before. Some of these features are live, while others are expected to ship by May. 

Collaborative editing within teams

Premiere Pro's collaborative editing features have been updated to make the process faster while ensuring the project is worked on and saved properly. For added peace of mind, all changes are saved locally within a user's device as well as in the cloud.

Adobe has also worked to reduce miscommunication errors that add to post-production time. The recently added Sequence Locking makes it so that a person can take ownership of a section of footage, and no one else can edit it while this is in effect. Additionally, the new implementation of progressive project loading makes it so that only the sections a person currently needs to work on are loaded. That way, team members can get the exact sequences they're meant to work on without affecting others' work.  

Built-in text-based editing 

Premiere Pro is already worth the price of the subscription as it automatically transcribes imported videos using Adobe Sensei, which is impressive in its own right. However, the software gets even more advantageous with the brand-new text-based editing workspace, which makes it easier to find specific parts of recordings and make changes to them. For instance, say you wanted to get a soundbite of a specific sentence that you remember hearing while recording. You can search the transcribed text and quickly locate that part of the video in just a few seconds rather than comb through the footage to find it. 

Additionally, It's also easy to move clips around in the timeline directly from within the text editor while using the same shortcuts rather than having to leave and make these changes elsewhere. It's worth noting that Premiere Pro is currently the only professional video editor with text-based editing built into it at this time. 

Text-based editing is currently still in Beta but is expected to ship by May. 

Unifying LOG and HD footage color in a sequence

As we all know, each recording device displays different colors, brightness levels, and tones in its footage. It's for this reason that many editors are extremely familiar with LUTs (lookup tables) as these are used in video color grading to make sequences shot on various devices look to their best advantage.

However, now Premiere Pro seeks to do away with this extra LUT editing step by introducing automatic tone mapping. This quickly fixes up footage from various devices by employing the best coloring and contrast for each sequence. It also serves to make footage shot between LOG and HD capture devices look more uniform and appropriately detailed, so viewers aren't jostled by visual differences.

Adobe noted that it respects the fact that working with LUTs and having the knowledge to do so is a source of pride and control for many editors. As such, tone mapping and the ability to automatically detect video log colorspace can both be turned off if desired. 

Premiere Pro workflow improvements

Adobe has been hard at work making quality-of-life improvements to that enable Premiere Pro to work faster and provide more helpful features. Here are the latest workflow improvements.

• Background Auto Save: Works in the background to make backups without disrupting the user experience. This enables the ability to step backward on your work when needed.
• System Reset Options & Effects Manager for plug-ins: Quickly clear cache, wipe preferences, and troubleshoot incompatible plugins. 
• Accelerated GPU: Effects and transitions are employed far faster than before.
• Other workflow improvements: ProRes render previews, more zoom levels, title and graphic batch adjustments, direct export to Media Encoder, and more.

After Effects is more approachable than ever

After Effects hits 30 years in 2023, and to celebrate, Adobe has worked to make the visual effects and motion graphics software faster and more approachable.  

Color management made easier

Native support for ACES and OpenColor IO have been added to After Effects to help reduce color inconsistencies that come from videos being shot with multiple devices. This will slim down the amount of time it takes for artists to apply uniform effects across different shots. 

Finally, a Properties panel and Colorama color picker

A brand new Properties panel on the right side of the After Effects window allows effects artists to change stroke colors, anchor points, rotation, opacity, text properties, keyframing, and more without having to navigate through deep-seated layer menus. Users can also determine what properties specifically show up in the Essential Properties panel for a super fast, customized workflow. This will make the effects process a whole lot more convenient.

Selectable track mattes were a popular addition that Adobe added to After Effects last year, but now they've been made even better. Users can now create and use keyboard shortcuts with this feature to make it easier to access their most-used tools. In a similar vein, Colorama now defaults to the After Effects color picker to help users quickly find the exact tone and hue of a color they want.  

These are all welcome changes and ones that will feel familiar to anyone who uses Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Adobe software that employs the Properties panel.

Frame.io brings better security than ever before

Adobe completed its acquisition of Frame.io back in 2021, and since then, it has worked to improve the video collaboration platform for its users. The software has already been an extremely convenient place for teams to share video projects, get feedback from others, and get updates in real time. Now some important updates are making Frame.io even better for creative teams and those they work with.

Ground-breaking security watermarks

Security is always a major concern for creatives and enterprises. With that in mind, Frame.io now has a brand-new feature called Forensic Watermarking. This is "an invisible watermark that's undetectable to the human eye embedded in the video... [it] can survive file copying, screen recording, or even external recording from cameras and mobile devices." These watermarks can be created within seconds and can be applied to clips as short as 30 seconds. That way, your work will always be marked as yours, even if someone steals it and markets it as their own. 

But what do you do if you think someone is using your work? Users can contact Frame.io support reps, who can then extract the invisible watermark from the video (if it is there) and get information on who has the rights to the footage. Any additional actions to take will be determined from there. 

Frame.io now works with photos and PDFs

Frame.io is expanding its abilities to work with photos and PDFs, which will make the software usable across more departments and not just video teams.

As part of NAB 2023, Adobe also discussed how its native camera-to-cloud integration has extended to FUJIFILM X-H2S and X-H2 photography cameras. This means that RAW, JPEG, TIFF, HEIF, 8K ProRes, HEVC, and H.264 files taken on these cameras are automatically sent to the cloud (via Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or smartphone tether) and appear within Frame.io for team members to edit and review on whatever platforms they work from. 

This drastically saves time and allows work to get done faster since photographers can keep working on their shoot while editing teams can dive into enhancing the still media right away.

Editing and asset comparing made easier

Frame.io now allows teams to see all annotations, comments, and feedback on any still file all at the same time. This includes Adobe RAW Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign files. Simply click on the comment log on the side, and additional details for a specific annotation can be read while non-destructive markings on the still image are visible. 

Frame.io has allowed users to compare video files for a while, but now the ability to compare versions of still projects has also been added. That way, teams can easily look at changes and determine if something looks the way they want it to. 

In other news, a new integration with Capture One allows photographers and tech teams to upload and share files from anywhere in the world using Frame.io's camera-to-cloud feature. This will make it easier for wide-spread teams to gain access to projects quickly and get working on them in little time, regardless of distance and time zones. 

Exciting things are yet to come

Adobe has always been on top of developing updates that make creative work a whole lot easier. The many quality-of-life improvements and added tools announced at NAB 2023 will undoubtedly streamline many workflows in the professional creative space. It's amazing seeing the best video editor, Premiere Pro, getting even better. 

This is only the beginning of the year and so there are sure to be even more announcements from Adobe regarding its most popular programs. Adobe listens to its audience and works to implement many of the most-asked-for features, so we expect great things still to come.

Procreate is many artists' go-to drawing program, but since it's only available for iPad and iPhone, it's not something that Windows users can easily gain access to.

Fortunately, I've checked out plenty of other amazing drawing apps on the market and know that many can work just as well as Procreate, if not better than the Apple-only app. Adobe Fresco is the best alternative overall for many reasons, but I'll go over some other awesome drawing programs as well.

As with Procreate, the drawing programs on my list are best used on devices that offer pressure sensitivity and are coupled with a compatible stylus.

For instance, the Surface Pro and Surface Pen are perfect examples of ideal drawing tools to use with the best drawing apps for Windows.

Best Overall: Adobe Fresco

I've been using Adobe Fresco since it launched in 2019, and I'll choose it over Procreate any day whether I'm drawing on an Apple or Windows device. For one thing, it's absolutely free, but it's also super intuitive, let's me work in layers, has plenty of brushes, and offers dozens of other tools to help me create the artwork I envision.

The pencil brush strokes react so believably that I often forget that I'm not using paper and pencil or canvas and watercolor. Of course, digital drawing is far more forgiving, so I can undo mistakes when necessary or mix brush types in a way that wouldn't work in real life.

Adobe Fresco offers far more tools than Procreate. One of the most important aspects for me is that Adobe Fresco allows both raster and vector layers within one document.

This means I can create base pencil sketches using pixel brushes and then go over them with crisp vector lines (which remain smooth no matter how much you zoom in or out) for a beautiful comic book-style effect.

There are also live brushes, which build upon each stroke to behave realistically. For instance, using a watercolor live brush believably spreads water and pigment effects with each touch of the stylus.

I can also adjust the water-to-paint ratio to get the exact watercolor effect I'm looking for. Adobe is constantly adding updates to Fresco, so more tools are bound to come to this program down the line.

It used to be that you had to pay $9.99/mo for Adobe Fresco's Premium features and brushes, but now these tools are all free and included with the base software. That's yet another reason to go with Fresco.

Best comprehensive app: Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is also one of my favorite programs and an ideal alternative to Procreate. It is very popular among professional artists since it can handle a wide range of tasks and has plenty of powerful features to help you have better control over your work.

There are dozens of brushes and layer options along with various selection and shape tools to give artists everything they need. Since it's so widely-used, there are also dozens of plugins to add additional abilities, such as the Stability AI plugin that allows users to create prompts and add AI-generated visuals to their work.

Of course, you can also use AI generation via Adobe's own program, Firefly.

However, one of the biggest problems people have with Photoshop is that it can be incredibly daunting for beginners. It often takes multiple classes for users to really understand how to use it.

For that reason, people who want to use Photoshop as a drawing program might find all of the extra photo-editing features unnecessary. However, taking the time to master the software's various tools can help an artist add even more effects and overall depth to their work.

The good news is that since Photoshop is one of the most popular design tools in the world, thousands of Photoshop tutorials and YouTube videos already exist and can teach you how to use it.

Of course, the other big problem many people have with Photoshop is the subscription plan. It's rather expensive at $20.99 per month, and there are no one-time purchase options.

Best for Vector drawing: Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is one of the most common companion apps to Photoshop, but while the latter (and Procreate) work primarily in raster layers, Illustrator is a vector graphics program. Vector graphics scale with an image size to always remain sharp and crisp looking.

For this reason, Illustrator and other vector graphics programs are usually used to make logos, billboards, website icons, patterns, or other imagery that might be used in various sizes. However, while Illustrator can import raster files, it is not meant to produce raster layers.

Illustrator is arguably easier to learn than Photoshop; just like its flagship sibling, there are thousands of free online tutorials to help get you started. To truly master it, you might need to take a formal class, though. There are dozens of fonts, and Illustrator makes it very easy to apply various effects to them.

There are also tools to help you quickly create patterns or change line and fill effects for any selected layers. Additionally, Adobe offers tons of assets that can be accessed with additional subscriptions, giving you plenty of fonts and images to work with.

Illustrator shares the same big drawback that Photoshop does; you must pay a subscription to use Illustrator as there is no one-time purchase option. It's $20.99 per month to gain access to this vector graphics software. But considering it's the best in the industry, it might be worth it if you specifically need these kinds of vector tools or plan on using it often enough.

Best comic book creator: Clip Studio Paint Pro

Hand gestures and complicated body positioning pose some of the biggest challenges for some artists. If you primarily like to draw comics or manga, then Clip Studio Paint Pro is here to help get complicated positioning correct. In this way, it's far more helpful than Procreate.

Clip Studio Paint Pro has a huge library of 3D assets, which you can place in a document and then draw over. For example, let's say I want to create a dramatic scene in which someone is running toward the viewer. I can drop in a 3D human figure and pose it the way I want before drawing over it on another layer.

There are also object assets like trees, school desks, and much more to help you position a scene and get everything looking right before drawing your own take on everything.

Not looking forward to posing complex finger positioning? Clip Studio Paint Pro also offers AI scanning, which reads finger positioning from a camera and then copies it onto a 3D figure for you. Pretty nifty, eh?

This drawing program is set up somewhat similarly to Photoshop, so anyone already familiar with drawing programs should be able to adjust to its drawing tools quickly. However, it also offers more in-depth animation options as well as both vector and raster brushes to help you make the exact look you're going for.

It's crazy to think that all of these assets and an amazing drawing tool are available at such a low price (and without a subscription). Clip Studio Paint Pro really is a fantastic option for comic book and manga creation. Not to mention, the low price makes it a great value buy.

Best Photoshop alternative: Affinity Photo 2

Serif's Affinity programs are perfect for people who want more controls than what's provided in Procreate. Affinity Photo 2, specifically, is a Photoshop competitor, and it offers most of the same photo editing and digital drawing tools as Adobe's flagship program to help me create the artwork I envision.

However, unlike Photoshop, I only had to make a one-time payment to gain access to it.

The program's pressure sensitivity feature is very good on compatible Windows devices that use styluses to help me get the exact look I want from my brush strokes. This software also handles large files easily and can apply effects quickly (as long as your Windows device is powerful enough to keep up).

There is a huge brush library with different textures and thicknesses to add depth to any drawing. Plus, the layers are easy to work with and offer Mask Layer options similar to those found in Photoshop.

Due to its layout, those who are already familiar with drawing programs like Photoshop will be able to adjust to Affinity Photo 2 very quickly. However, it will take more work for beginners to really get the hang of it. While not as popular as Photoshop, there are dozens of video and written tutorials online if you need help.

If you're interested, you should check out the free trial and see if Affinity Photo 2 works for your artistic needs.

Best for graphic designer beginners: Affinity Designer 2

While Procreate is a raster-based drawing program, Affinity Designer 2 is a vector graphics program that directly competes with Adobe Illustrator.

As such, Affinity Designer 2 is a great choice for anyone who wants to create vector projects (something Procreate cannot do) but is turned off by Illustrator's forced subscription plan. With a one-time purchase, Affinity Designer 2 gives users powerful vector tools that are very similar to Illustrator's tools.

The free trial makes it easy to get a feel for the program. If you decide you like it, the fixed price point of only $70 is really good compared to other vector graphics programs out there. Affinity Designer 2 offers plenty of layer effects and has a similar layout to competitors in the industry, making it easy for graphic design veterans to jump into it.

It offers plenty of fonts and effects to create unique designs. Plus, the Shape Builder Tool can help me quickly create any shape I'm looking for by adding or subtracting segments from the whole. You'll be able to create distinct logos, icons, and other imagery in no time.

While not as commonly used as Adobe's programs, there are still plenty of other Affinity Designer 2 users out there. As such, you should be able to get community assistance or find online tutorials to help you with your projects.

Krita

Whether you're a digital drawing beginner or a designer veteran, Krita is an amazing Procreate alternative.

Despite being free, this open-source drawing and 2D animating program doesn't skimp out on the tools. It's relatively easy to use for people who are already familiar with drawing programs, and there is a large community of users for beginners to learn from.

Krita provides a large library of brushes, and it's easy to work with them in layers. Whether you're going for a more realistic look or a cartoony one, the presets can help you create what you're looking for. This open-source software also features some simple 2D animation tools, allowing users to add movement to their work.

As with any program, Krita has some faults. Some of the tools and layouts of the software don't feel as refined as Procreate or Photoshop.

n top of that, this drawing program sometimes receives updates that can cause problems or make it unusable until issues are resolved. Granted, this can happen with any drawing program, but it seems to happen more often with Krita.

Drawing programs that are better than Procreate

Procreate has a handle on the iPhone and iPad market since it's only designed to work with Apple's devices. However, there are plenty of drawing programs for Windows that work just as well as Procreate, if not better. Some of the best drawing programs for Windows are free while still providing a huge library of brushes and other tools.

My absolute favorite drawing program is Adobe Fresco. It's free to use but allows for both vector and raster layers within one document. This software regularly receives updates with new tools and features, and it will likely continue to do so for a very long time.

If you're looking for a more comprehensive drawing program, Adobe Photoshop is the ideal tool for you. It's the design standard within the industry and offers a wide variety of tools, fonts, effects, features, and assets for artists to use. However, it can be challenging for beginners to learn unless they take dedicated courses for it.

Do you prefer to work primarily with vector graphics? Adobe Illustrator is the go-to graphic design software. It's slightly easier to learn than Photoshop and has a huge, dedicated user base to learn from. There are tons of fonts, shapes, and effects to use within your work to give your projects the exact feel you're going for.

Drawing program FAQs

What you need to know

• Adobe Express is a content creation tool, previously known as Adobe Spark, that makes it easy to create various marketing materials or social media posts regardless of skill level. 
• On Tuesday during Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, Adobe Express for Enterprise was announced to help anyone at any business create collaborative and high-quality, on-brand content. 
• Adobe Express for Enterprise is currently in beta and available to Adobe Creative Cloud enterprise subscribers.

For the last few years, Adobe has been working hard to create and update approachable programs that are easy to use, regardless of skill level. Adobe Express (previously known as Adobe Spark), is one such program that allows creators to produce anything from business flyers and banners to content for social media. It's approachability, regardless of skill level, is the reason that it has become so popular. Even beginners can use it to easily produce beautiful projects.

As announced at Adobe Summit in Las Vegas on Tuesday, the software company has now introduced Adobe Express for Enterprise. This is another branch of the Adobe Express software, but specifically designed around business usage. Express for Enterprise is "a universal creative tool enabling anyone in the enterprise, at any creative skill level, to easily create, share and collaboratively review high-quality and colorful on-brand content, like multimedia assets, social posts and much more."

So what makes Adobe Express for Enterprise different from Adobe Express? This new program focuses more on collaborative workflows, allowing employees from different departments to work together and review projects while using Express for Enterprise as "a creative hub." Additionally, Express for Enterprise integrates Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), a content management system (CMS) that can easily manage all of a company's assets and other content.

Adobe Express has received several updates since it launched and will soon be receiving a new mixed-media editor, generative AI capabilities through Adobe Firefly. This will allow users to create brand-new assets and imagery for their projects. 

Adobe Express for Enterprise is currently in beta and available to Adobe Creative Cloud enterprise subscribers.

Windows Central's take

Being able to create visual projects whether for marketing purposes or social media posts is important for any company. However, for many years the ability to produce quality content has only been available to people with specific design skills. With a program like Express for Enterprise, even employees with beginner design skill levels can easily find on-brand assets and templates to produce elegant content and collaborate with others. It's a win-win for any company as well as a way to make people of any skill level feel empowered. 

It's also likely that programs like this will affect professional designers and artists, but not necessarily in a negative way. It's more like Adobe Express for Enterprise will shift how things work in the design industry. Typically, businesses still need to employ artists to create fresh assets specifically for their brand. Express for Enterprise could free up designers' time by allowing more people to create content using their assets so they can move on to producing other brand-new content. 

What you need to know

• Stability Diffusion is a popular text-to-image AI generator that can create photorealistic images and digital art.
• The Stability AI plugin from Stability Fusion works with Adobe Photoshop and allows Photoshop users to quickly add new AI-generated effects, edits, or elements within a document.
• This fast ability to edit or create in Photoshop will change the digital design process. 
• DALL•E 2 can also be utilized in Photoshop through this plugin as long as users have an OpenAI API Key.

Adobe Photoshop has long been one of the biggest go-to programs for digital artists, thanks to its powerful editing abilities and many drawing tools. Now, with the latest Stability AI plugin, users don't have to draw or edit every little detail. Instead, they can easily add AI-generated elements or alterations to projects directly from within Photoshop after just making a few strokes and writing quick text prompts. 

As shown by @mrgreen on Twitter, "Stable Diffusion's Photoshop plugin lets you create, edit, and iterate AI images from within Photoshop." The attached video demonstrates how typing in a quick prompt and making vague brush strokes on a document can lead the plugin to generate artwork that matches. 

For instance, opening a new document, typing "mountain range" into the text prompt box, and clicking Generate leads to several mountain range options appearing for users to choose from. 

Photoshop users can also use the Stability AI plugin to perform edits or add complete details to an initial prompt in just a few seconds. The video @mrgreen shared demonstrates this by adding a flying red dragon over the mountain range image. Instead of taking hours, this was done simply by drawing quick red brush strokes in the sky, selecting the area around the red strokes, typing "red dragon" into the Prompt box, clicking Generate, and selecting one of the options that appeared.

But the Stability AI plugin isn't limited to just being a digital drawing tool. It can also create advanced photo edits in a way that looks very realistic. As @mrgreen shows in another video, quickly selecting the area around a woman's head and typing in a text prompt allows users to do things like change the woman's hair color or believably shorten her hair length in seconds. The plugin's abilities were further shown by changing the color of the woman's clothing and placing her in a different background setting.

The processes for photo editing and digital art creation can take hours of valuable time, so having a fast tool like this that gets the same kinds of results will free up artists so they can work on more projects. It also opens up the ability of creation to users who might not have as strong of a Photoshop skillset. 

More about Stability AI

Technically, the Stability AI plugin for Photoshop isn't new; it was released on September 2022. But, with more focus on AI and deep learning art generation in the past few months this tool has been getting more attention recently.

In order to download and use the Stability AI plugin in Photoshop, users must have a DreamStudio Account. Additionally, if users want to use the latest version of DALL•E 2 to generate art in Photoshop then an OpenAI API Key is also needed. 

What you need to know

• Adobe Acrobat PDF capabilities are coming to Microsoft Edge.
• Microsoft Edge's built-in PDF reader will be powered by Adobe Acrobat tech, which should deliver more accurate colors and improved performance.
• Narration, improved text selection, and improved security will also be available within Edge's PDF reader.
• Purchasing an Acrobat subscription will provide access to more features within Edge through a browser extension.

Microsoft and Adobe just announced that the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine will come to Microsoft Edge later this year. Beginning in March 2023, Edge's built-in PDF reader will use the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine. Microsoft promised the shift would result in higher fidelity, more accurate colors and graphics, and improved security in its announcement post. The company also highlighted that the switch would bring better security and greater accessibility.

“PDF is essential for modern business, accelerating productivity in a world where automation and collaboration are more critical than ever,” said Adobe SVP and GM Ashley Still. “By bringing the global standard in PDF experience to Microsoft Edge and the billion-plus Windows users worldwide, Adobe and Microsoft are using our joint heritage and expertise in productivity to take an important step forward in making modern, secure, and connected work and life a reality.”

Microsoft promises that the features of the new Adobe-powered PDF experience will be the same as the current offering. Additional capabilities, such as editing text and images, and converting PDFs to other file formats, will be available to those that sign up for an Acrobat subscription.

The new PDF experience will be available in Edge on Windows 11 and Windows 10.

Microsoft will shift to the Adobe Acrobat engine in phase. The move is scheduled to occur in March 2023. The legacy engine will remain available until March 31, 2024. Switching to the Adobe Acrobat engine will be opt-in for organizations at first. General users will not have the option to revert to the legacy PDF engine after the Adobe Acrobat engine launches. Microsoft has an FAQ section plus other information in a Tech Community post.

If you want to enter the world of content creation, you'll eventually need a microphone. Whether live streaming, producing videos or starting a podcast, you might feel that your hardware isn't up to scratch. Especially if you compare yourself to those who turn a fun hobby into a successful career, it's easy to assume you need a high-end mic coupled with a desk full of expensive accessories, but is there really anything wrong with a standard USB-powered microphone?

I've used many desktop mics in my career and personal life, and there's some truth to the value of premium hardware, but a recent trend has made things so much easier for newcomers with the power of AI. You could sit and read through my ramblings about polar patterns, sample range, and bit depth, but only a select few people genuinely care about that. Besides, those interested in the specifics aren't letting others dictate which microphone they should buy, nor should you.

⚠️⚠️Stop gatekeeping microphones⚠️⚠️

Some recent Twitter discourse featured wildly misguided information about USB microphones, specifically the Blue Yeti, one of my all-time favorite options that served me well for over a decade. I'm sure this Twitter user had good intentions since they followed up with some explanations and recommendations — still, the slander against my cherished, multi-pattern USB mic sparked a heated debate among creators.

A huge benefit to working in tech is getting hands-on with new hardware for review, but I'm unlikely to shake the frugal lifestyle from my youth. I hate spending money; there's no getting around it. In 2010, I wanted to upgrade from a bargain-basement 3.5mm microphone connected to an unshielded port on a terrible motherboard, so I opted for the USB-powered Blue Yeti after weeks of agonizing debate.

The original silver-colored Yeti still works today, albeit with a slightly wonky volume knob caused by an accidental drop. Whoops. We were even gifted a second Yeti for my partner in 2020 since we usually shared the original between us, and that's when you start to notice one of the only downsides to USB mics: desynchronization.

Ports on your motherboard inherently restrict USB audio devices, and two devices are never guaranteed to be aligned perfectly during recordings. It is possible to calculate the necessary milliseconds of delay and fix it with some tweaks to record group podcasts with multiple USB mics, but it's rarely a permanent fix. Still, it's understandable to feel frustrated when things could be better out of the box, and some users expect studio-quality playback with zero effort.

Enhance your livestream audio for $0

Most USB microphones offer a relatively flat response in their recordings, utterly unaffected by post-processing. Some fancier models might have built-in noise reduction or other enhancements, but even basic variants can mimic premium alternatives with a few simple plugins without spending a dime. If you're planning to broadcast your audio in a live setting, OBS Studio is a free app for Windows, and it's my favorite option for streaming and recording all kinds of other content.

There is a collection of free audio filters pre-installed on OBS Studio, with plenty more community-made options available around the web. You can solve almost any microphone issue with at least one of these plugins, ultimately combining them to find the perfect balance for your mic. For example, a noise suppressor helps reduce unwanted background sounds; which is ideal if you're running air conditioning on a hot day or your desktop PC is close enough to hear the case fans.

If you're a quiet speaker, you don't need a specific microphone designed for hushed or feminine tones, just a simple compressor. Not every problem needs solving by throwing cash at your screen, and you shouldn't blindly take advice from anyone gatekeeping a category of hardware. It'll take at least one afternoon of studying to learn how to use audio filters to their best effect, but a quick search immediately finds a massive collection of helpful tutorials on YouTube.

Adobe Podcast — hack your mic quality

It's a wild scenario when Adobe, of all companies, is leading the way with a free audio-enhancing tool. The same Adobe, who priced me out of all their software and drove me to open-source alternatives, somehow managed to create one of the most useful web-based plugins I've ever used in its Adobe Podcast beta (formerly Project Shasta.)

Inherently designed to simplify the podcast recording process, Adobe is working on a straightforward app to replace complicated mixers and post-processing edits. Think of it like a virtual conference meeting where everyone can join a web-based audio chat room; only this time, the host can save the whole session and generate a professional finished product with barely any effort.

Using the same technology from its Adobe Premiere Pro software, recordings will automatically transcribe the speech to text, ready to edit as a script instead of cutting up complex audio waveforms. It all sounds fantastic, but the best part is the AI-powered Enhance Speech tool, which Adobe has already released, sneakily hidden in a small drop-down menu.

If you're editing videos, podcast episodes, or interviews to post online later, the Enhance Speech tool from Adobe is perfect. It'll remove background noise and make your speech sound like it's being recorded with professional equipment. Even with a $10 lavalier microphone, I can supercharge the recordings with this free tool, and nobody would ever know it initially sounded like trash.

An ethical future for AI?

Whether you're streaming live speech or recording it for later use, there are some seriously impressive methods to improve the quality of any microphone. No matter which variant you can afford, there are advancements in this vague and ever-evolving AI category to augment your audio, depending on your interpretation of the term. Just because I 'graduated' to the so-far-unbeatable Earthworks Audio Ethos XLR mic doesn't mean you should avoid USB models.

Above all, I won't stand for slander against my precious Blue Yeti. That little silver-coated trooper served me well for over a decade and saw me earn paid narration work after some mild post-processing cleanup. You could do far worse than the number-one-selling USB microphone from Blue, no matter how you feel about Logitech's eventual ownership. Other variants might have taken its place as the best streaming microphone, but there's never been anything wrong with the Yeti.

In the last few weeks, some hawk-eyed Adobe users grew outraged when they noticed a new setting appeared in their accounts' privacy and personal data section. This new setting, known as content analysis, automatically allows "[user] content to be analyzed by Adobe for product improvement and development purposes." This means video, audio, images, text, and other user-created documents can be fed into machine learning to develop Adobe AI tools.

It's unclear how long this default setting has been in place, but it was first noticed a couple of weeks ago thanks to users like FlorianMoncomble on Reddit, who posted about it and made the situation more well-known. 

adobe_added_a_on_by_default_content_analysis_of from r/photoshop

The setting in the privacy and personal data section of Adobe accounts reads, "Adobe may analyze your content using techniques such as machine learning (e.g., for pattern recognition) to develop and improve our products and services. If you prefer that Adobe not analyze your files to develop and improve our products and services, you can opt out of content analysis at any time. This setting does not apply in certain limited circumstances."

Adobe has a lengthy content analysis FAQ page to try and explain more about this setting. Through this, we know that "Adobe performs content analysis only on content processed or stored on Adobe's servers" but doesn't analyze work stored locally on user devices. So basically, anything stored in the cloud is fair game, which makes sense since your basically sending your work to be hosted on someone else's computer. 

While there's a lot of additional information on this FAQ page, it's honestly very vague. That's especially true when you try to figure out exactly how Adobe uses the data analysis of your work. Content analysis wouldn't be such a bad thing if users could opt into it, but the problem is that this setting is on by default, and millions of Adobe users are contributing unwittingly. In other words, any work you have created and sent to the cloud since this setting went up could have already been analyzed to develop and improve Adobe's products.

I have nothing against the idea of content analysis within Adobe, but how the software company has implemented this setting is egregious and feels shady. In a time where artists' creations so often get used without permission online, and AI generators are causing moral dilemmas, it's a major "screw you" from Adobe to have user content automatically opted into content analysis without giving users notice or initial say in the matter—especially coming from a company that should understand the privacy rights of artists everywhere.

If you haven't already, I highly suggest going into your Adobe account privacy settings and toggling content analysis off. It's better to be safe than sorry. Not to mention, allowing Adobe to get away with this behavior is not good. 

As we ramp up to Techtober, we expect to see a wave of announcements from Microsoft, its partners, and big players within the PC and gaming industries. But that surge isn't expected for a couple of weeks. For now, we've had to settle for juicy news rather than a massive list of stories. But even on a relatively slow news week, we saw some major news break.

GoldenEye 007 coming to Xbox Game Pass

GoldenEye 007 is an iconic title that revolutionized the first-person shooter. It's also one of the most disputed games of all time in terms of licensing. The rights to the game were split between multiple parties, including Microsoft and Nintendo, causing conflict. After decades of back and forth, the James Bond classic is finally on the way to modern consoles... with some limits.

A remaster of GoldenEye 007 is on the way to Xbox Game Pass as part of Rare Replay. It will feature an improved framerate, native 16:9 4K resolution, and split-screen multiplayer.

Unfortunately, Microsoft confirmed that GoldenEye 007 will not feature online gameplay on Xbox consoles. That means you can't frustrate your friends by picking Oddjob unless they're in the room with you.

Players on the Nintendo Switch will be able to play GoldenEye 007 online, though even that has a peculiar setup.

Halo lead Bonnie Ross to leave 343 Industries

Sticking with gaming news, Bonnie Ross will leave 343 Industries and Microsoft after 15 years of leading the Halo franchise. Microsoft shared a statement on the departure:

“After more than 28 years in gaming at Microsoft, including 15 years leading 343 Industries and Halo through its most ambitious steps forward, Bonnie Ross will be leaving Microsoft and spending more time with her family. We are thankful for her leadership of 343 during which the team launched Halo 4, Halo 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the Halo television series, and Halo Infinite. We wish her all the best. Head of Production Pierre Hintze will become Studio Head effective immediately. The 343 team is hard at work shipping the Winter Update, the biggest Halo Infinite update since launch.”

Ross created Halo: Master Chief Collection, which has evolved into a well-received title after a rocky start.

Pierre Hintze will take over as studio head of 343 Industries effective immediately.

Adobe will purchase Figma for $20 billion

Adobe is a titan in the creative industry, and it's about to get bigger. The company announced an agreement to purchase Figma for $20 billion this week. Figma is a web-based graphic design tool that's centered around collaboration. It's competed with Adobe XD for years, but it will now become part of Adobe's brand.

The move has drawn quite a bit of criticism from artists. Many viewed Figma as a bastion of Adobe-free creative software. While Adobe's purchase of Figma is expected to go through in 2023 (pending regulatory approval), the tech giant's CPU said that Figma will run autonomously:

"Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani. David is someone I’ve known for a few years now and we have a strong relationship of mutual respect; I’m very excited for us to collaborate with him on how to continue growing Figma’s business. The entire Figma team will report to me. We plan to continue to run Figma the way we have always run Figma — continuing to do what we believe is best for our community, our culture and our business."

EVGA announces plans to leave graphics card game

EVGA has been a stalwart of the graphics card industry for years, but that will soon come to an end. The component maker shocked the industry by announcing plans to completely cut ties with NVIDIA and stop making graphics cards altogether. EVGA cited disrespectful treatment from NVIDIA and a plethora of other reasons for the split.

EVGA has earned a solid reputation due in large part to its support and warranties. The company confirmed that it will honor all warranties of existing cards.

"EVGA is committed to our customers and will continue to offer sales and support on the current lineup. Also, EVGA would like to say thank you to our great community for the many years of support and enthusiasm for EVGA graphics cards", said EVGA management.

With the NVIDIA RTX 40-series on the way, people will have to look elsewhere to pick up the best graphics cards.

Review roundup

Our experts take a look at the latest gadgets and games each week. From a batch of new laptops to a portable monitor for the Xbox Series S, here's everything we reviewed over the past seven days:

• The Wandering Village PC review: A city builder with a strong foundation
• Metal: Hellsinger PC review — A short but addictive rhythm shooter with killer riffs
• NBA 2K23 Xbox review: Almost a stellar entry
• Dynabook Portégé X30W-K review: Some improvements but still behind the competition
• ASUSTOR ASW205T review: A simple, yet powerful 2.5Gb unmanaged switch
• Lenovo ThinkPad Z13: A modern take on an iconic laptop
• xScreen for Xbox Series S review: A Full HD panel for gaming almost anywhere
• Xiaomi Notebook Pro 120G review: Fine-tuning a winning formula

What you need to know

• Adobe announced that it will purchase Figma in a deal worth approximately $20 billion.
• Figma is a web-based design platform that allows artists to collaborate online.
• Many artists and designers have expressed concern about the deal on social media.

Adobe just announced an agreement to purchase Figma for $20 billion. The move has caused a stir among artists and developers, many of which are concerned about the deal. The FigmaDesign subreddit is full of complaints and calls to leave Figma for other programs, such as Sketch.

"Oh please no. If this is the great news that was being talked about yesterday on the zoom webinar, it's not great. Nor good. Horrible. Adobe, please go away," said Valkyra87.

"The product will get worse, but at least it’ll cost more," added troubled-sleep.

Many users expressed their feelings with four-letter words. Multiple threads have appeared announcing plans to leave Figma or asking for recommendations for the best drawing apps for Windows. 

Andrew Bennett, founder & graphic designer at desktopGeneration, shared his thoughts with us on the deal.

"Adobe’s acquisition of Figma is deeply troubling. They (Adobe) have already shown their willingness to abuse their dominance in the creative industry, and there is no reason to believe they have the best interests of the artists/designers using their software in mind right now."

Others on Twitter appear to agree with Bennett and people from the FigmaDesign subreddit.

It seems that artists using desktops, drawing tablets, dedicated tablets, and other pieces of hardware may be on the hunt for a new piece of design software. We'll keep an eye out to see if any particular app steps up to fill any void created by Figma becoming part of Adobe.

What you need to know

• Adobe will acquire Figma in a deal worth approximately $20 billion.
• Figma is a web-based design program that allows artists to collaborate online.
• Figma will continue to run autonomously after the acquisition.

Today, Adobe announced an agreement to purchase Figma for approximately $20 billion. The deal is expected to close in 2023, though it is subject to regulatory clearances. After the deal closes, Figma's co-founder and CEO Dylan Field will remain as the leader of the Figma team. As the companies wait for the deal to close, they'll run independently.

Figma is a web-based design platform that is used heavily by artists and designers throughout several creative industries. One of the main benefits of Figma is that it allows for seamless collaboration through the web. That capability has become increasingly important as people shift to hybrid and remote work.

Figma's website touts many big-name companies as clients, including Zoom, Slack, Twitter, and Dropbox.

Even if you aren't a designer or artist, you may have heard of Figma if you follow Microsoft news. When Microsoft open sourced over 1,500 emoji, it uploaded them to both GitHub and Figma. The Surface Duo design kit was also shared on Figma by Microsoft.

Figma directly competes with Adobe XD. Initial responses on the FigmaDesign subreddit have been negative. 

When Figma's Field announced the news, he emphasized that Figma will continue to run autonomously:

"Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani. David is someone I’ve known for a few years now and we have a strong relationship of mutual respect; I’m very excited for us to collaborate with him on how to continue growing Figma’s business. The entire Figma team will report to me. We plan to continue to run Figma the way we have always run Figma — continuing to do what we believe is best for our community, our culture and our business."

Scott Belsky, Adobe CPO, echoed similar sentiments:

"Figma will operate w/ autonomy, continuing to work their magic, no plans to change prices, and will also continue to be free for education. we're eager to preserve what's great, and tackle some of the new possibilities together."

Adobe will share more details about the deal in an investor conference call at 7 AM PT (10 AM ET) today, September 15, 2022.

Anyone who buys a PC for Adobe's Creative Cloud apps knows that its apps can come with some demanding hardware requirements, and they won't run smoothly on just anything. Whether you're editing images in Photoshop, cutting videos in Premiere Pro, or creating something in between with its siblings, you'll need a capable CPU and possibly even a laptop with a stylus-supporting touchscreen.

Modern updates to generative AI also mean you'll need stronger components, even if much of it can be offloaded to the cloud. Either way, our top pick is the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, standing out as a solve-all machine with a touch display, but there are alternatives that suit more specific needs, so let me explain why we picked these winners.

Best overall PC for Adobe Creative Cloud

My recommended Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra configuration:

As we said in our Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra review, you can have pretty much everything you could ever want from a PC, in this powerful laptop. It's similar to the highly-praised Dell XPS 16 (as seen in my Dell XPS 16 review), but doesn't cost as much.

It features the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H AI CPU paired with the NVIDIA RTX 4070 L dedicated graphics card, which delivers all the power you'll need for working in Adobe programs. You might not be buying one of these as a gaming rig, but it can absolutely tear up the latest titles.

The Galaxy Book4 Ultra also boasts a large 16-inch OLED display, with both 2.8K (2880x1800) resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio, allowing it to show off your projects to their best advantage. For video editing in Premiere Pro, the resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and excellent color range are also very helpful. But as with many graphically powerful devices, it doesn't have the best battery life, so you'll want to stick near an outlet when using it.

Best OLED laptop for Adobe Creative Cloud

My recommended ASUS ProArt P16 configuration

Photographers and videographers not only need a reliable graphics card but also need to see their projects with accurate coloring and crisp resolution. In that case, the gorgeous 4K display on the ProArt P16 just makes sense. It also has a gorgeous AMOLED display for showing off creative projects to best effect.

The latest model now comes with AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, combined with an NVIDIA RTX 4060 L or 4070 L GPU with either 32GB or 64GB of RAM. Meanwhile, it has the choice of either a 1TB or 2TB SSD storage to keep up with your creative files. Altogether, this produces a laptop that can handle some serious design and editing work while incorporating local AI effects and neural filters.

RELATED: OLED vs IPS vs AMOLED vs Mini LED: Which display is best?

The ASUS ProArt P16 also offers fantastic speakers and a really nice touchpad and keyboard, making it a joy to use, whether you're editing your work or simply chilling to your favorite music.

Best desktop for Adobe Creative Cloud

My recommended Dell XPS Tower 8960 configuration:

As you can read from my own Dell XPS Tower 8960 review, it's easy to recommend this desktop thanks to a ton of configuration options that suit various budgets. Not to mention, it offers a healthy range of ports for connecting any accessories or devices you might want to use.

On the front are USB-C, USB-A, and 3.5mm audio ports that are easy to reach for common accessories alongside an SD card slot. You even get an optical drive and a heap of ports on the rear to connect pretty much everything you could want.

The entry model is worth avoiding if you're going to be getting into intensive work such as Premiere Pro editing. While it has dedicated graphics, you're not saving much, and the performance will be lacking. The sweet spot is the mid-tier Intel Core i7-13700 model paired with the NVIDIA RTX 3070.

But you can really beef up the hardware inside, too, and you can also opt for a 14th Gen Intel Core i9-14900 CPU, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, up to 4TB of storage, and a beefy NVIDIA RTX 4090 if you wish.

This tower looks like it belongs in an office, but it's capable of scorching performance, and even if you do opt to get one of the lower-tier configurations, it's a simple task to upgrade the internals down the road. You'll just want to make sure to get a decent monitor to match the tower's abilities. If you really care about visuals looking good, I suggest going for one of the best gaming monitors.

Best tablet for Adobe Creative Cloud

My recommended Surface Pro 11 configuration:

As our own Daniel Rubino said in his Surface Pro 11 review, this tablet sports a glorious 13-inch 2880x1920 3:2 display with either an OLED or LCD panel, which reaches up to 120Hz option, Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors, up to 32GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It is a Copilot+ PC and one of the best AI laptops on the market today.

You really can't go wrong with this tablet for keeping up with raster or vector drawing programs, as well as photo editing and other Creative Cloud-based work. You'll want to make sure to purchase a Surface Pro 11 stylus if you do plan on drawing on the tablet, though. It's also great for web browsing on the sofa as a tablet, video editing, and productivity work if you buy the optional keyboard.

The Surface Pro 11 uses the same flagship form factor that was first popularized by Microsoft back in 2012. It features a kickstand around the back, and if you purchase the separate keyboard accessory, it basically turns the Surface Pro into a 2-in-1 convertible laptop. That way, you can use it more effectively across different Adobe programs.

It also has two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the design has also been updated for the latest generation, with slimmer bezels and a larger display. The Surface Pro 11 epitomizes the idea of a powerful laptop inside a tablet's body.

Best 2-in-1 for Adobe Creative Cloud

My recommended ASUS ProArt PX13 configuration:

We really love this 2-in-1 laptop, as you can read from my ASUS ProArt PX13 review. We think it's one of the best 2-in-1 laptops to release in recent years.

For one thing, it has a gorgeous 13.3-inch OLED display that really makes colors pop and allows true black to come through on the screen. That way, you can see accurate hues and contrast when working on your Adobe Creative Cloud projects. It even comes with a pen so you can draw right on that amazing panel, which offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity for great stroke accuracy.

When needed, just wrap the keyboard back around, and you can use the ProArt PX13 as a normal laptop as well. There's even a built-in dial in the touchpad for easily interacting with programs and accessing tools. However, its placement is far more suited to right-handed users.

As far as configurations go, this laptop only has an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, but it offers solid AI-boosted performance you can rely on. As far as graphics go, you can choose between either an RTX 4050 L or an RTX 4060 L, which are both rather powerful and can handle more intensive tasks within graphic design, illustration, photo manipulation, video editing, and digital drawing. The ASUS ProArt PX13 really is a fantastic choice for people who need to swap between using a tablet and a laptop for their creative projects.

Best AI PC laptop for Adobe Creative Cloud

My recommended Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x (Gen 9) configuration:

As explained in my colleague Zachary Boddy's Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x review, this laptop looks classy and is powered by Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm's most powerful AI processor, to handle AI processes locally rather than on a distant server.

While not the most powerful GPU on this list, it also comes with a respectable Qualcomm Adreno GPU, which is plenty powerful enough to keep up with the most common Adobe software, like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, and more.

Configuration options allow it to have up to 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, and 1TB of SSD storage to hold all of the creative files you need it to.

The Yoga Slim 7x also offers 3K resolution (2944x1840) on a 14.5-inch OLED touchscreen that supports HDR.

The speakers are "just okay," but they will get the job done without being stellar. Of course, if you usually use good headphones or earbuds, this won't really be an issue.

How we test laptops, PCs, and tablets

Whenever we get a device for review, we run it through several tests and compare it against established benchmarks to determine how well it performs. These include testing the performance of the CPU and GPU, checking the read and write speeds of the SSD, determining how long a battery can last for, and much more.

We also take a personal look at laptops, PCs, and tablets to see what the experience of using them in daily life is like. This way, we can evaluate not only a device's technical accomplishments but our own anecdotal situations with it as well. I also personally love to test the performance of laptops, tablets, and PCs by running games on them or working within Adobe programs to see how well they can keep up with the tasks given to them.

Adobe Creative Cloud runs well on a wide range of Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs, but if you're specifically looking for a device that can handle these creative programs, then you're obviously going to want something that can run smoothly and display your projects accurately. Generally, that means looking towards the higher end of the market, where the more powerful hardware lies.

If you're shopping for the best choice possible, the superb Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra is a beast of a machine for all purposes. It has high-end hardware inside and a high-end design on the outside. What's more, it's truly a pleasure to spend the day in front of. Likewise, if you're looking for a capable AI laptop to take with you, the ASUS ProArt P16 is a fine choice to make, and it's handy on the go for anyone at work or in school.

Creative Cloud casts a wide net, and all of these machines will be a fine companion. Generally, you're looking to get as much horsepower as your budget allows, especially if you're diving into apps like Premiere Pro, because in those cases, the more grunt you have, the better your time will be.

If you find yourself using AI tasks while using Adobe Creative Cloud programs, then you will be better served by using one of the latest laptops or desktops that feature an NPU (Neural Processing Unit). NPUs allow computers to work faster and more efficiently by taking some of the load off of GPUs and CPUs, which results in faster AI task completion. We've reviewed several NPU devices and will continue to do so as the year goes on. As such, we will update this page with the latest and greatest options as we discover them.

Creative Cloud PC FAQ

Premiere Pro and After Effects are wonderful programs that allow people to edit their videos and then add animations, footage, or audio easily. Today, Adobe announced several updates and a significant change coming to both programs. Among these updates, the video collaboration platform, Frame.io, is now built-in to these programs, making it easier to communicate with your creative team members. There are several other great updates incoming, including tweaks to navigation, machine learning, and more.

These latest versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects will come in a "phased release" beginning on April 12. Over several days, these updates will be available to all Creative Cloud Desktop application users.

What's new in Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro is popular video editing software available for Windows 10 devices, such as the best Windows laptops. Here are all of the recently revealed updates.

• Team collaboration with Frame.io: Users can send their work to another person for feedback. These responses show up directly on the video timeline via the cloud so you know exactly what sections are being discussed.
• Import mode updated: When starting a new project, users now see their own media rather than settings. Then, when the user clicks Create, the chosen media is brought into the timeline as a new sequence.
• Better navigation with new header bar: To make it easier to get around within the software and find what users are looking for, a header bar has been included. Click on Import, Edit, or Export tabs. Additionally, when in a project, a customizable dropdown menu lets you access options like Captions and Graphics, Color, Audio, and more. Last of all, Quick Export allows users to create their own customize exporting settings for easy use.
• Improved Export mode with private post default: Now when users go to post their videos to social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, the default is set to post as private. This way, you don't accidentally post a video when you shouldn't. You can also check and make sure that your video looks correct before it goes live.
• Fast Auto Color saves time: Using Adobe Sensei's AI, users can improve the color and lighting within their videos with just the click of a button. This only works on a clip to maximize its effects, so you'll need to do it for each clip within your project. Additionally, a settings box appears on the right of the screen and you can adjust several settings like Curves, Saturation, Tint, Shadows, and more to get the perfect visual experience.
• Thousands of new Adobe Stock assets: New graphics, audio, and premade footage is available to users for free following the update. This includes high-quality assets in HD and 4K for users to put in their projects.

What's new in After Effects

After Effects is a digital effects program that allows users to place animations, footage, and graphics into their videos. Several new changes will come to the program following the update including:

• Frame.io review and approval: Allows team members to communicate on a creative project by leaving notes at specific points along a video's timeline. Communication is done through the cloud making it easy to quickly get responses and approvals.
• Scene Detection: Using Adobe Sensei's machine learning, After Effects can identify cut points in rendered sequences so motion designers don't have to waste time doing it manually. Additionally, users can split them into layers or add markers to make the creative process easier.
• Extended Viewer lets you see all layers: The updated viewing experience allows users to see all 2D and 3D layers regardless of whether or not they are in the frame. The program also shows which 3D layers render together in the same areas.

What Frame.io built-in to Premiere Pro and After Effects means for you

While Frame.io is integrated into Premiere Pro and After Effects, it's not at its full capacity. However, you can pay to upgrade the video collaboration software to provide more features if you'd like. These are the features and limitations of the base Frame.io in Premiere Pro and After Effects.

You can have as many people as you want to review the project, leave comments, and approve things. Users can also have five concurrent projects going at a time while using Frame.io. This also brings 100GB of dedicated storage to users.

Frame.io for Creative Cloud will roll out to Creative Cloud All Apps, Premiere Pro Single App, After Effects Single App, and the Student Teacher All Apps plans. However, it will not be available for K-12 or Higher Education Institution plans.

Making things easier

By adding Frame.io for Premiere Pro and After Effects, along with the various updates to either program, these tools have become even more helpful and easier to use. Now you can communicate more efficiently with your creative team and get the feedback you need to reach your end goals faster.

As is usually the case with big software services, Adobe has made a few updates to Creative Cloud Express that make its program easier to use. The focus in March was to make more quick guides to help users implement their creative ideas more easily whether they're on their phones or laptops. We'll go over these changes one by one and explain what makes them so important.

What is Adobe Creative Cloud Express?

This is a simple program on web and mobile that allows people to quickly put together templates. Similar to the best photo editing apps, Creative Cloud Express allows you to choose fonts, place assets, and work with others on a team to make the perfect project. If this sounds familiar, it's because this program used to be called Adobe Spark. It can work on any device that supports Windows 10 version 19041.0 or higher or Windows 11.

Customizable basic shapes

Shapes are one of the basic tools in this program and often one of the first things that gets placed in your project. Of course, the more shapes there are from which to choose, the more likely you are to find what you're looking for. Clicking on the Icons button in the program brings up new and familiar shapes. Use the new customization abilities to adjust fill and border colors or to change border width to look just the way you want it to.

Mobile Quick Actions

Quick Actions allow you to quickly make changes to your projects so you can get them done more efficiently. With last March's update, users can now use the Crop Quick Action tool from smartphones as well as the Resize Video option so you can make your videos look the way you want to with fewer steps involved.

Other quality of life improvements

As with any program, Adobe continues to bring other small but helpful improvements to Creative Cloud Express including:

• Improved file drag and drop: Your desktop view will stay zoomed in when you drag and drop files into your projects.
• Replace feature: Makes it easier for users to test out different assets in their projects and allow people to discover and choose assets more easily.

More to come

Adobe continues to work on its programs every month to bring quality of life improvements and useful new tools to help users reach their end goals easier. Check out the updates that have come to Adobe Creative Cloud Express to see what you can create.

What you need to know

• Adobe just launched Creative Cloud Express, a product built to simplify the process of creating multimedia content.
• Creative Cloud Express has a drag-and-drop interface, thousands of templates, and has features powered by Adobe Sensei.
• Creators can access the new product on the web and through the Microsoft Store, Google Play Store, and Apple's App Store.
• Free and paid versions of Creative Cloud Express are available.

Adobe launched a new tool that aims to simplify the creative process. It's called Creative Cloud Express, and it features a drag-and-drop interface and templates for content creation. The product is available on the web as well as through the Microsoft Store, Google Play Store, and Apple's App Store.

A free version of Creative Cloud Express is available, though to unlock more templates, Adobe Stock collection photos, licensed fonts, and several other features, you'll have to get a Premium subscription, which costs $10 per month. A paid subscription also gets you access to premium features in Photoshop Express and Premiere Rush.

Creative Cloud Express includes several features powered by Adobe Sensei, which is an AI technology seen in other apps such as Photoshop and Premiere. Quick actions powered by Adobe Sensei include removing backgrounds from photos, trimming and merging videos, and turning videos into GIFs.

Below are the key features of Creative Cloud Express, as outlined by Adobe:

• Simple drag-and-drop functions to quickly customize thousands of beautiful templates.
• 20,000 premium Adobe fonts and 175 million royalty-free licensed Adobe Stock images.
• Advanced search and discover capabilities, powered by the Adobe Stock Marketplace.
• "Quick Actions" powered by Adobe Sensei to remove background features from photos, trim and merge videos, turn videos into GIFs and convert/export PDFs in a few clicks.
• Shared Templates and Shared Brands to ensure brand consistency across teams.
• Seamlessly manage social media publishing workflows with ContentCal features, once integrated with Adobe.
• Integration with Creative Cloud Libraries.

Adobe shares examples of Creative Cloud Express being used in the real world in a blog post.

In addition to being available as a standalone subscription, Creative Cloud Express is included with Creative Cloud All Apps and flagship single-app plans over $20. It is also free for K-12 users.

Creative Cloud Express for Enterprise and Teams is on the way in 2022, though Adobe didn't specify which features that version would include.

What you need to know

• Microsoft and Adobe have expanded their partnership with a focus on PDFs.
• Adobe Sign is now fully compatible with Microsoft Teams.
• Liquid Mode in Microsoft Edge improves the experience of reviewing PDFs within mobile versions of the browser.

Adobe and Microsoft announced new features that will help people view and interact with PDFs on desktops and mobile devices. A new experience will allow users to negotiate and sign PDFs within Microsoft Teams using Adobe Sign. Additionally, the mobile versions of Microsoft Edge will support Liquid Mode, which uses Adobe's AI to improve PDFs.

"I am thrilled to deepen our partnership with Microsoft to reimagine a modern, secure, and connected workplace that helps employees thrive," said senior vice president and general manager of Digital Media at Adobe, Ashley Still. "These deep product integrations allow people to do their best work by connecting the apps they use daily — from negotiating and signing a contract from within Microsoft Teams, Outlook or SharePoint, review PDFs on a mobile device with Liquid Mode in Microsoft Edge and more."

Adobe covers the expanded partnership in more detail in a blog post. The company claims that the majority of business files are made with either Microsoft or Adobe file formats, which makes a partnership between the two tech giants a natural pairing.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro discussed the importance of using technology to improve productivity. "Our deeper collaboration has never been more important as companies become digital-first workplaces and pioneer new ways of working." He added, "millions of joint Adobe and Microsoft customers will have easy access to the best digital document experiences wherever they are, changing the game for modern productivity and the future of work."

Adobe predicts that digital document processes will become more common in the future, making its partnership with Microsoft increasingly important.

What you need to know

• Adobe announced several new features for its Creative Cloud apps at Adobe MAX.
• Photoshop and Illustrator files will be reviewable on the web, and Creative Cloud subscribers will be able to make light edits within a browser.
• Adobe unveiled new ways for Behance members to profit from their artwork and skills.

Adobe unveiled a long list of new features for its Creative Cloud apps at Adobe MAX 2021. All of its major apps received updates, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and Premiere Pro. In addition to expanding capabilities within Creative Cloud applications, Adobe introduced new ways for Behance members to make money. These new features and options should allow creators to fully utilize the best PCs for the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Photoshop and Illustrator will now be accessible through the web. Artists can create a URL and invite people to comment on a file from either program. People don't need a Creative Cloud subscription to add comments or to see the file. If a reviewer does have a Creative Cloud subscription, they can make light edits to files directly within their browser. This functionality is in public beta for Photoshop and private beta for Illustrator.

Adobe also announced Creative Cloud Spaces and Canvas. This creates shared repositories for files, libraries, and links to improve collaboration. Creative Cloud Spaces and Canvas is in private beta now and should arrive next year.

While the acquisition was completed earlier this month, Adobe highlighted its addition of Frame.io. It's a cloud-based platform for video collaboration. The company states that "the combination of Frame.io's platform with Creative Cloud opens new paths for innovation in video that we're excited to explore, both within our products and in other video editing tools beyond Adobe."

Photoshop has improved masking capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei. The program can automatically pick out subjects from an image. Creators can then hover over an object to mask it out. Adobe also introduced a Landscape Mixer feature to Photoshop that lets artists switch a landscape image from summer to winter or a meadow to a desert.

Videos will render more quickly in After Effects thanks to support for multi-frame rendering. Adobe states that this feature speeds up performance by as much as four times. Premiere Pro will be able to add automated speech-to-text more quickly as well.

Here are some other highlights from Adobe Max:

• Illustrator for iPad has a preview of Vectorize, which can convert any image into a vector graphic.
• Lightroom has a reimagined selective adjustment tool.
• Fresco now has perspective guides, motion effects, and other new features.
• Adobe XD gained the ability to add playable videos and Lottie animations to prototypes.

In addition to new features, Adobe introduced new ways for creators to profit from their work. Behance is a social media platform owned by Adobe that's built to showcase artwork. Adobe announced that Creative Cloud subscribers can offer subscriptions that provide access to livestreams, source files, and other content on Behance. Creators can also add a "Hire Me" button to their profiles.

Adobe MAX runs through October 28, 2021 and includes hundreds of sessions. You can check out the free event on Adobe's website.

Whether you're taking fun family photos or capturing cool stunts on video, Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements can help you enhance your shots and make them look amazing. Both have received a number of important updates including new Guided Edits so you can easily make your work more dynamic-looking in just a few seconds. It's easy to see why these two are respectively one of the best photo editing software and best video editing software out there.

It's a whole lot easier to get the editing results you want if you get the most out of your camera when taking the shot to begin with. But these latest improvements make the editing process much simpler. We'll dive into all of the new aspects starting first with Photoshop Elements and then jumping into Premiere Elements.

What's new with Photoshop Elements 2022

With this latest version, Photoshop Elements has gotten some really snazzy features to help you make your photos look even better.

Artistic effects: Give your pictures a painted look

The latest effects transform your favorite photos so they look like paintings. There are several filter styles from famous artists and their iconic work. Play around with the options and see what looks you like best.

Animated overlays: Breathe more life into your pics

The best part about animated overlays is that you get to determine where the animations go. For instance, if you don't want the moving parts to ever obscure your subject matter, simply select the area you don't want the overlays to go. For instance, you can make falling snowflakes surround someone without ever actually going in front of their face.

Warp photos into new shapes: Endless editing possibilities

Give your photos a completely different feel by warping existing photos or even placing those warped images in new projects. For instance, you can take a picture with someone wearing sunglasses and then warp another image to fit the shape of the lenses to make it look like that's where they are.

2 new guided edits

Adobe Photoshop Elements makes the editing process easier by providing guided edits that help you make specific changes to your images. Two new options have been added with this latest version.

Perfect pet pics:

• Make your furry friend's fur stand out by adjusting color and lighting settings designed specifically for pet colors and shapes. You can also remove any reflective pet-eye issues or use the healing tools to get rid of any distracting elements like collars and leashes.

Extended photo backgrounds:

• Ever take a picture and wish that background was wider? Well, now you'll easily be able to fix that problem with just a few short clicks. This can help shift the focus of your images or even allow you to crop the image in such a way that the subject matter is more centered.

Slideshow styles: Show off your pics in new ways

What's the point of making stunning photos if you're not going to share them? Adobe updated Photoshop Elements' slideshow options so there are more styles and layouts to choose from.

GIF playback in Organizer: View GIFs in the user interface

Up until now, any GIFs in the Organizer remained static. However, with the 2022 version, you'll be able to see the GIF playback while in this thumbnail or focused view.

Automatic software updates: Always have the latest version

It's rather annoying coming to your computer only to see that the software you want to use needs to update. Adobe understands this pain, so from now on Adobe Photoshop Elements 2022 automatically updates without you needing to interact with any dialog boxes. You'll always have the latest version of the software.

What's new with Premiere Elements 2022

Touching up your videos and making them look more professional is easily accomplished with Premiere Elements. Now, even more features have been added to make the process that much more convenient.

Auto-reframing: Focus on a specific spot in your videos

Ever record something and then the main subject of your recording goes off to one side? Premiere Elements' new auto-reframing feature allows you to easily select someone or something and then focuses on it throughout your video without any complicated frame-by-frame edits.

Perfect aspect ratios: Get the right dimensions for Instagram

You've made an awesome video, now you have to share it with others! With the new aspect ratio options, you can easily change the dimensions of your videos so they show up to their best advantage on social media sites. You can even add fun effects like backgrounds to vertical videos, motion titles, and mattes.

2 new guided edits

Premiere Elements makes editing your videos incredibly easy thanks to the 27 guided edits it contains. Two of these are brand-new with the 2022 version.

Animated overlays:

Give your videos a fun twist by adding animated effects over them. The latest update includes animations for snowflakes, hearts, butterflies, and more.

Adjust shadows and highlights in videos:

Every shoot a really cool video only to realize that the lighting isn't quite right? With just a few clicks, Premiere Elements will step you through how to fix shadows and highlights so it's easier to see the fun things you've captured.

Export slideshows: Perfect social media sharing

Show off your fun trip or family event with the perfect slideshow. Premiere Elements helps you prepare it for social media postings by providing fun new styles and templates.

Compress video files: Easily share your videos

Ever try to upload a video to social media only to get a notice saying your file is too big? That won't be an issue with the new video compression feature. Simply use the slider to change the size of your videos so they're ready to go up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or even in your text messages.

GIF playback in Organizer: View GIFs in the user interface

Up until now, GIFs couldn't playback in the Organizer. Fortunately, this has been updated so you no longer have to completely open the files to view them.

Automatic software updates: Always have the latest version

For the past two decades or so, we've had to wait for a notice to pop up on our computers letting us know when an update released for our version of Premiere Elements. However, going forward the software will update itself. Huzzah!

Enhance your life

Adobe knows how to make editing photos and videos a whole lot easier with Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. There are a lot of convenient changes with the 2022 versions that could help you make even better projects. You can buy them separately or purchase them in a bundle.

Adobe Photoshop Elements is more friendly to beginners than its professional sibling. It can guide you through edits and has simplified tools that help you improve your photos. While it's built to be easy to use, it still has a long list of features. Unlike some photo editing apps, including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 doesn't require a subscription. Right now, you can pick it up for $40 off through the Microsoft Store.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 launched in October 2021, so it's about due for a refresh. That being said, it's still a solid app for editing images. That's especially true if you factor in its value with its current discount.

Photoshop Elements 2021 includes options for tilting and correcting faces, can automatically back up your catalog structure, and supports quote graphics. It also has an option to add motion to static images, allowing you to create animated GIFs from your photos. Many of its features utilize Adobe Sensei, an AI technology that simplifies the photo editing experience.

The photo editing app can guide you through how to edit landscape images, including removing haze and erasing unwanted objects from images. It also has guides on how to create modern duotones and how to move, scale, and duplicate objects.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 is geared towards everyday users that want to edit and improve images without having to learn a complicated interface. If you prefer a more powerful offering, you can check out our list of the best photo editing apps on Windows 10.

Adobe Premiere Pro is an excellent video editor and one of the best Windows apps but can get pricey due to its monthly subscription. However, you can save big on Adobe Premiere Pro if you're a student or teacher. Here's how to make sure you get your savings.

Products used in this guide

• Adobe: Adobe Premiere Pro ($21/month)

How to save money on an Adobe Premiere Pro subscription

1. Have an education email ending in .edu, .k12, or other email domains sponsored by an educational institution
2. Subscribe to the Creative Cloud "All Apps" plan on Adobe's website
3. Enter your email in the online form
4. Enter your billing information
5. Verify your details

If you don't have an education email ending in .edu, .k12, or an approved domain, are homeschooled, or you face any other issues, you can verify your details by calling Adobe at 800-585-0774.

Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe makes it easy to sign up for a subscription as a student or teacher, especially if you have an education email. The only equipment you need is a web browser and your personal and banking details.

The student or teacher discount for Adobe brings the price of the entire Adobe Creative Suite down to $20 per month for the first year. After a year, that price bumps up to $30 per month every year. If you aren't a student or teacher, or if you don't take advantage of the deal, just Adobe Premiere Pro costs $21 per month. That price difference isn't substantial when dealing with only one app, but the student or teacher deal gets you the full suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

If you subscribe to the entire Adobe Creative Suite and aren't a student or teacher, it costs $53 per month. That means over your first year, you'd save almost $400. Even after the price jumps in your second year of the plan, you'd still save over $275 per year.

Adobe Premiere Pro allows you to create complex, multi-layered video edits. You can also use it for basic to intermediate audio edits. It's a great software to use to take your videos from start to finish.

If you're looking for an affordable laptop for creators, make sure to check out our HP ENVY 14 review. The laptop delivers strong performance but has a more budget-friendly price than many PCs built for creators.

What you need to know

• Adobe released its Acrobat Reader DC app onto the new Windows 11 Microsoft Store.
• The app is a full-featured x86 viewer for signing and sharing PDFs.
• Acrobat Reader DC is just the latest of many "classic" Win32 apps appearing in the new store thanks to Microsoft's relaxed policies.

With Microsoft's new Store for Windows 11 comes looser restrictions on the types of apps allowed to appear. Even though it has only been a few days since the Store went live in the latest Insider preview for Windows 11, several classic apps have already appeared, including OBS Studio, Zoom, Canva, Microsoft Edge extensions, and WinZip.

Now, as spotted on our Discord channel, Adobe has brought its full x86 Acrobat Reader DC app to the Microsoft Store.

Acrobat Reader DC is a free, full-featured app for "viewing, printing, signing, sharing, and annotating PDFs" and is considered the gold standard if you deal a lot with PDFs. While Adobe has other apps like Adobe Reader Touch on the store for Windows 10, it is a bit more basic and much older going back to the Windows 8 days back in 2012.

Even though Acrobat Reader DC goes back years for Adobe, it is also regularly updated, usually for security and continuous support, with the latest appearing on June 8.

Because of how the new Microsoft Store works, the version listed is the latest from Adobe as it comes from the company direct. Indeed, updates for this app won't go through the Microsoft Store at all. Instead, it is all handled via the app as it can ping Adobe's servers just as if you had installed it from their website.

There are still at least four months before Windows 11 is released, which leaves plenty of time for even more apps to appear. It'll be interesting to watch to see which other ones show up in the coming weeks.

Thanks, GeoffEff and Coellito, for the tip.

What you need to know

• Windows 10 on ARM devices can natively run Adobe Photoshop as of this month.
• Photoshop on Windows 10 on ARM supports almost all of the same features as other versions of the app
• Native Windows 10 on ARM support brings Photoshop to devices such as the Surface Pro X.

Adobe Photoshop can natively run on Windows 10 on ARM PCs, such as the Surface Pro X starting this month. Native support brings one of the best Windows 10 photo editing apps to a growing collection of devices built for working on the go. A help page from Adobe specifies that native support rolls out for Photoshop this month and outlines all of the details.

Photoshop supports the vast majority of the same features as the version available on non-ARM PCs. There is, however, a small list of features that aren't available on Photoshop running natively on Windows 10 on ARM:

• Import, Export and playback of embedded video layers
• Shake Reduction filter
• Invite to Edit workflows are not supported. To learn alternative ways to send invitations via Web, see Access and edit shared cloud documents.
• Preset Syncing is not on by default
• Windows Dial Support
• Generator and related features
• Opening or placing U3D files
• Starting Photoshop from Lightroom 'Edit In' command
• Oil Paint Filter
• Spell Checking and hyphenation for Hebrew and Arabic languages
• Plugin Marketplace panel

Microsoft started beta testing Windows 10 on ARM support for Photoshop back in November 2020. Now, it's rolling out to everyone this month.

What you need to know

• Adobe Flash will be removed from Windows 10 by July 2021.
• Microsoft outlines the update process that will remove Flash in a blog post.
• Older versions of Windows will have Flash removed as well, including Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012.

The impending death of Adobe Flash on Windows 10 has been known for some time. Microsoft started removing Flash Player from its Edge browser last year. Adobe Flash reached its end of support on December 31, 2020. Soon, it will be removed from Windows through an update. An updated blog post by Microsoft spells out when the upcoming "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" will roll out.

The update that permanently removes Adobe Flash from Windows 10 will roll out at some point in July 2021.

• Starting in June 2021, the KB4577586 "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" will be included in the Preview Update for Windows 10, version 1809 and above platforms. It will also be included in every subsequent Latest Cumulative Update.
• As of July 2021, the KB4577586 "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" will be included in the Latest Cumulative Update for Windows 10, versions 1607 and Windows 10, version 1507. The KB will also be included in the Monthly Rollup and the Security Only Update for Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Embedded 8 Standard.

As explained by Microsoft, even older versions of Windows will receive the update that removes Flash. The company also notes that any PC upgraded to Windows 10 version 21H1 or later will have Flash removed.

Since we've known about the death of Flash for quite some time, we've had time to reminisce about the tool. Our senior editor shared his ode to Adobe Flash at the end of last year.