Adobe updates Illustrator CC and InDesign CC with new features

Adobe on Thursday issued updates for Illustrator CC, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and InDesign CC, introducing new features and user interface improvements to the professional design software.

Announced through Adobe's official blog, Illustrator CC takes a cue from users by incorporating a number of highly requested features like straightforward image cropping, a function previously accomplished by offloading documents to other apps.

With Image Crop, Illustrator CC users now have the ability to immediately crop images placed into a document with intuitive crop handles. Much like cropping tools offered in other Adobe products, including the flagship Photoshop CC, Image Crop in Illustrator CC comes with measurement tools and a familiar dotted bounding line.

In addition to inline image edits, Image Crop automatically discards unused image data to reduce file sizes and improve overall performance.

Aside from the new cropping option, Illustrator CC introduces a Color Themes Panel for creating, exploring and saving color themes for later use. The panel UI also extends to other Adobe apps, offering users consistency across various platforms. For example, themes can be generated from pictures taken with the Adobe Capture mobile app, which are then pushed to Illustrator through Adobe's cloud.

As for InDesign CC, the document layout software received a new UI that lets users jump between Adobe apps and flagship cloud features. A redesigned New Document Panel is included for quickly starting new projects with document presets and recent document settings.

Further embedding Adobe CC elements into the main app is integration with templates from Adobe Stock, which can be accessed via the New Document Panel.

Adobe's Creative Cloud plans start at $19.99 per month for single apps like Illustrator CC, while access to all CC apps comes in at $49.99 per month.

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21 Comments

9secondkox2

said about 7 years ago

I'm cool with some of the overdue new features.

But it stop freaking messing with the UI every other update. You guys are killing my productivity.

polymnia

said about 7 years ago

It's nice that Adobe drops feature upgrades every few months these days.

funny how motivated they are to keep innovating when they want you to keep paying every month.

SpamSandwich

said about 7 years ago

I kept my CS5 suite and refuse to "upgrade" to this rentware lunacy.

slprescott

said about 7 years ago

I recently learned Illustrator as a side activity to game development. While it's a great tool, the subscription model of about $250 every year is hard to justify for an occasional artist. Freeware alternatives like Inkscape can often suffice.

lorin schultz

said about 7 years ago

slprescott said:

I recently learned Illustrator as a side activity to game development. While it's a great tool, the subscription model of about $250 every year is hard to justify for an occasional artist. Freeware alternatives like Inkscape can often suffice.

Try Affinity Designer. It's very reasonably priced (CAD$69.99, so about USD$52-ish), and in my opinion more intuitive and in many ways better than Illustrator.

Although I like Illustrator, I, like you, got tired of feeding the Adobe monster every month for something I only use every couple of months. I got Affinity as a way to ease my withdrawal but it turns out it's so good I haven't missed Illustrator at all.

You can buy it on the App Store. There's a link to a free trial at the bottom of the product page on their web site: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/

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