A spotter's guide to Adobe Creative Cloud desktop apps

Adobe's Creative Cloud apps are the gold standard in professional software for creatives of all stripes. But whether you're a graphic designer who uses Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator day-in, day-out, or a videographer who knows Premiere Pro and After Effects like the back of your hand, there's a wealth of apps you have access to under a Creative Cloud All Apps subscription that, while you may not be that familiar with, could be a very welcome addition to your creative workflow.

So here we've put together a quick spotter's guide to all Adobe's fantastic desktop apps, and where to find them. How many have you tried?

Design tools

Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop CC is your common or garden digital imaging app, the number one choice the world over for photographers and designers. It lets you enhance, retouch, and manipulate photographs and images in any way you can imagine, with clever content aware technology and powerful design tools like editable shapes and vector layers. (Also available as a Single App.)

Lightroom. Often spotted in the same habitat as Photoshop, Lightroom lets you organise, edit and share your all photos from anywhere, whether that's on your computer, on the web, or on your iPad, iPhone or Android devices.

Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator CC is the industry-standard vector graphics software. Create compelling vector art and illustrations using advanced, precise drawing and typography tools, and work quickly and intuitively on everything from brand identities and marketing materials to graphics for the web, video, and film. (Also available as a Single App.)

InDesign. InDesign CC is professional page layout software for print and digital publishing. Use it to design, preflight, and publish a broad range of content in print, online, and for tablet apps. You can create simple or complex layouts quickly and efficiently with precise control over typography, built-in creative tools, and an intuitive design environment. (Also available as a Single App.)

Experience Design (beta). Still a fledgling at the moment, the Experience Design app is designed to improve teamwork among workgroups who are prototyping apps and mobile content, and allows you to build and share prototypes, then collaborate and feed back on them in realtime.

InCopy. Adobe InCopy CC makes it easy to collaborate in demanding editorial workflows. With InCopy CC, writers, editors, and designers can work simultaneously on a single document without overwriting each other's contributions. (Also available as a Single App.)

Video tools

Premiere Pro. Adobe Premiere Pro CC is a powerful, customisable, nonlinear video editor that lets you import and freely combine virtually any type of media, from video shot on a phone to raw 5K and higher resolution footage, and then edit in its native format without wasting time transcoding. (Also available as a Single App.)

After Effects. The industry-leading animation and creative compositing software used by a wide variety of motion graphics and visual effects artists, After Effects CC gives you powerful timesaving features like a Live 3D Pipeline with Maxon Cinema4D software and Mask Tracker, which lets you apply a mask and effect that travels frame by frame throughout your composite. (Also available as a Single App.)

Audition. Adobe Audition CC is a cross-platform audio editor that speeds up production for video, radio, music, games, and more, thanks to uncompromising sound quality and intuitive workflows. (Also available as a Single App.)

Media Encoder. Ingest, transcode, create proxies, and output any format – this powerful media management tool allows users to work with media in a unified way across applications, tightly integrating with Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC and other apps for a seamless media processing workflow.

SpeedGrade. SpeedGrade is a colour grading application that delivers layer-based colour correction and look design tools to ensure that digital video projects are visually consistent and aesthetically compelling.

Prelude. Rapidly tag and transcode video footage and quickly create a rough cut with Prelude – a video logging and ingest tool designed for intuitive, efficient media organisation and metadata entry.

Story Plus. This service combines collaborative screenwriting, reporting, and scheduling tools with script metadata logging to help you edit video in Premiere Pro. (Also available as a Single App.)

Character Animator (beta). Create 2D characters in Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC and bring them to life in Character Animator. Act out movements and record your voice using your webcam and microphone, with realtime facial expression and motion tracking.

Fuse (preview). The new 3D modelling app lets you quickly create unique human characters for your Adobe Photoshop CC images, designs, prototypes and more.

Web tools

Dreamweaver. Build sites and apps with Adobe Dreamweaver CC – the all-in-one, industry-leading web design tool. Dreamweaver CC provides a robust and integrated solution to design, develop, and publish projects for any screen size. (Also available as a Single App.)

Muse. Adobe Muse CC lets you design and publish HTML websites for desktop and mobile devices without writing code. Design freely using familiar tools and shortcuts, easily add engaging effects and interactivity, and even integrate third party functionality like blogs and shopping carts. (Also available as a Single App.)

Animate. Design interactive animations with cutting-edge drawing tools and publish them to multiple platforms – including Flash/Adobe AIR, HTML5 canvas, WebGL, or even custom platforms – and reach viewers on broadcast TV or virtually any desktop or mobile device. (Also available as a Single App.)

Flash Builder. A development environment for building games and applications using the ActionScript language and the open source Flex framework. Flash Builder Premium includes professional testing tools such as profilers, network monitoring, and unit testing support.

Scout. Adobe Scout is a lightweight but comprehensive SWF profiling tool designed for Adobe Flash game developers. Any SWF file, regardless of whether it runs on mobile devices or in browsers, can be quickly profiled with no change to the code — and Adobe Scout quickly and efficiently detects problems that could affect performance.

PhoneGap Build. Take the pain out of developing mobile apps by simply uploading your HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript assets to the Adobe PhoneGap Build cloud service, and Adobe will do all the work of compiling for you while you put your feet up.

Spark. Are you a social butterfly? Create social graphics, web stories and animated videos with real punch, using Spark’s free graphic design app.

Workflow tools

Acrobat Pro DC. Keep a sharp eye out for the all-new Adobe Acrobat DC with Adobe Document Cloud, designed to change the way you work with important business documents. Do away with ink signatures and overnight envelopes, protect your important documents, work anywhere and edit anything.

Bridge. Bridge CC gives you centralised access to all the files and assets you need for your creative projects. Organise personal and team assets, batch edit with ease, add watermarks, set centralised colour preferences, and even upload your photos to Adobe Stock.

Creative Cloud. Where it all begins. The Creative Cloud for desktop app is where you can quickly launch and update your desktop apps, manage and share your assets, download fonts and assets, and showcase and discover creative work on Behance, all while staying conveniently out of sight.

To find out more about Adobe Creative Cloud for teams, get in touch with our team on 03332 409 251 or email Adobe@Jigsaw24.com. For all the latest news, follow @WeAreJigsaw24 on Twitter or like us on Facebook.