A silver line on the 'Cloud'

Wildlife photographer Sudhir Shivaram had a tough time lugging his image-stocked hard disks along. Travelling extensively in search of that picture-perfect vision, he yearned for more time to process the raw images. It had been a tiring, expensive struggle.

That changed last year with Adobe’s launch of its Creative Cloud image management and editing software suite. Sudhir could now edit on the move, save everything online!

Shivaram had much to share with fellow photographers at “Adobe Photography Symposium 2014,” the first platform of its kind unveiled here on Thursday. In the company of wildlife, luxury, lifestyle, wedding and natural history shutterbugs, he talked about the merits of creative photoshopping on the move.

But the game-changer had to be the monthly subscription-based online availability of hitherto unaffordably costly photo-editing software.

Natural history photographer, Jayanth Sharma understood the dynamics of that new access. He explained to Deccan Herald on the sidelines of the symposium, “Most Indians are using pirated software due to the steep price tag of legal software. With the entire range of photo editing tools now available for a monthly fee of Rs. 499 (dubbed the Creative Cloud Photography plan), it has become more affordable now.”

With the launch of five new mobile apps -- currently available only on Apple devices --, Adobe offered editing tools on multiple platforms. For photographers and graphic artists, this made a huge difference. Projects started on a desktop could now be processed on an iPad or iPhone, and saved directly onto the cloud.

Adobe’s new “free” applications featured Line, a precision drawing and drafting app; Sketch, a social free-form drawing app; Photoshop Mix and Lightroom for more efficient image editing on iPhone.

The apps could get released on Android platforms soon as indicated by rising demand. Janie Lim, Adobe’s marketing director, digital media, Asia Pacific, informed that the Creative Cloud platform earned Adobe 2.3 million customers globally.

With a third of Adobe’s R&D work carried out in Noida and Bangalore, the potential for growth in India was equally strong.

The online, subscription based platform, explained Lim, offered Adobe the opportunity to keep pace with the fast-evolving technology on mobile devices.

“So much has changed in the digital media in the last five years, and we didn’t want to be found wanting in upgrades.”

The ease with which the different editing softwares were updated online under the new platform made a huge difference for professionals such as Shivaram and Sharma. For them, the costly, time-consuming software upgrades would now be history.