Adobe launches cloud services for content creators

Adobe is planning to launch a series of Internet-hosted services, called Creative Cloud, designed for creators of digital content, the company said Monday.

Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch announced the new offerings at the Adobe Max conference, being held this week in Los Angeles. The services will be available early in 2012, according to the company.

Three new cloud services

Initially, the company will offer three services. One will provide fonts for websites. Another will help manage the process of digital publishing. The third, based on the Adobe Business Catalyst, will be for creating and managing websites. The company plans to introduce more services in the future, incorporating such Adobe products as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro and After Effects.

The cloud service will allow content creators to save their work in Adobe's cloud and access it from a wide variety of mobile and desktop platforms. Adobe will offer a base 20 gigabytes of storage, and provide a forum for creators to collaborate.

Maintaining web publications

For the font service, Adobe has acquired TypeKit, a subscription-based service for Web fonts. Since its formation in 2009, TypeKit has served more than 3 billion fonts to the Web-facing portions of organisations such as the New Yorker, New York Times and Twitter.

The digital publishing service could help publishers put their magazines and newspapers on the Web, or in tablet form. The service will allow publishers to maintain all the formats of their publication under a central service. Currently about 1,000 publications use Adobe's digital publishing suite to create tablet editions of their products, Lynch said.

In addition to Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe has also released an application for content creation on tablet devices, called Adobe Touch Apps.