The Adobe Max conference is Adobe’s largest annual event and, for the first time since 2019, it was back face to face in Los Angeles and broadcast live across the planet.

This year, Adobe celebrated it’s 40th anniversary. CEO Shantanu Narayen reflected back on his 25 years with the company and the way Adobe has helped lead digital transformations in so many ares of work and play over the years. In his keynote address, Shantanu said …

Our vast portfolio of industrial leading products are empowering billions of people to tell their stories in richer and more varied ways than ever before.

Shantanu announced that Adobe Express is now available for free to over 10 million global not-for-profits organisations to help them engage donor and generate increased impact was met with strong applause by the 6,000 in attendance. Shantanu also formally announced the recent acquisition of Figma, a leading web first collaborative design platform to re-image the future of digital creativity and productivity.

Shantanu mentioned that there are now 30 millions Behance members globally and 300 million images on Adobe Stock. And he concluded his keynote by thanking Adobe users who continue to inspire his over 27,000 employees to create products and experiences that change the world.
 

Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud led a session of demos and announcement of new features for a range of Adobe applications based on three themes:

• Precision & superpowers
• Sped & Ease
• Collaborative Creativity

Premiere Pro

• Auto colour correction
• Audio re-mixing
• Frame.io integration (video collaboration, review & iteration)
• Lots more Motion Graphic Templates within Adobe Stock
• Auto Color

Photoshop (desktop)

•  Simple selection tool
• Click & delete objects
• New neural filters
• New Sky Replacement features
• New gradient tools
• Share for review (Beta)
• Depth Blur
• Landscape Mixer
• Colorize

Photoshop on the web

• New editing & retouching capabilities
• Raw image support
• Contextual task bar

Lightroom

• Lightroom Albums for sharing & co-editing

After Effects

• Replacing objects with AI

InDesign

• New sharing & collaborating via HTML features
• Text wrap around object feature
• Style packs

Illustrator

• Intertwining feature

Adobe Express

• Integrating Adobe Express with Wix
• New video and animation features
• Real-time multiplayer collaboration
• Link directly to Photoshop to make edits and sync automatically
• New AI features eg – generating a background just my describing it
• Create unique fonts with generative AI

Substance

• Substance 3D Library enhanced
• Substance Modeler (modeling in VR)
• Substance Painter (linking with Substance 3D Assets)
• Substance Stager

Check out Scot Belsky’s blog post – Updated Creative Cloud helps you create with precision and speed and collaborate seamlessly

Have a look at the special post-Adobe Max Inject Creativity Live show on the Adobe for Education YouTube Channel.

Watch the Day 1 Keynotes and demos in full

A highlight of Adobe Max each year is Sneaks where new technologies, that may or may not end up as future Adobe apps or features of current apps, are demos by Adobe engineers. This years Sneaks features US Celerity and comedian Kevin Hart.

Have a look at the main Day 2 keynote event in full.