Master Collection provides ultimate flexibility for choosing exactly the tools you need at the moment, all at your fingertips, so you can create content for a variety of print, web, interactive, and video projects. This collection is done exclusively for CyberSpace. Install and enjoy!

When it comes to creative apps, Adobe is the undisputed 400lb gorilla in the room. Aside from a handful of consumer products, nearly all its software for Windows and Macs is available via Creative Cloud, on a subscription basis. Subscriptions mean you don’t own the software you’re spending money on, you have to keep forking out every month, and if you cancel the payments, you no longer have access to those apps.

When participating with a team project, rather than saving it locally, it’s saved online. The media isn’t sent to the cloud necessarily, that’s based on your need and preference, but if you’re working on a video project for example, you can have one person ingesting, another editing captions, and yet another editing sequences.

Subscribing to Creative Cloud also means gaining access to Adobe Stock photography, footage, website building templates and other assets. If you’re looking for video, you can hover the cursor over its thumbnail to get a preview of the footage over time, without having to download the clip in the first place. This enables you to get a good idea of what you’ll be using.

If suitable, you can then download it free of charge and use it in your project. It’ll be watermarked and of a lower quality, but once you’re ready to complete your work, if you haven’t shot any other footage that’s better, you can licence and purchase it. The watermarked clip will be automatically replaced with the full resolution version, and any changes or effects you applied to it in the meantime will be fully preserved.

Any asset you upload to Creative Cloud will be accessible from whichever computer, tablet or phone you’re working on. You can have shared libraries which other users can access and contribute to, and the motion graphic templates from Premiere Pro and After Effects can be stored there as well.

Creative Cloud also offers you the ability to contribute to Adobe Stock. There are obviously legal hoops you have to jump through, such as making sure you have written permission from everyone in the shot you’re submitting, but once your footage has been cleared, you’ll be able to earn royalties when anyone uses your work in their final projects. All of this is controlled via Adobe Creative Cloud. This is an app that mostly works in the background, lets you see which software you have access to, and which products you’ve downloaded.

Once installed, Creative Cloud resides on your computer in the apps folder. This is where you can control everything to do with the service. You can see which apps have updates, and reassuringly, Adobe doesn’t automatically download them for you, so you can work using your current version, at least until you’ve finished your latest project, and checked out what the new features are all about.

You can use the app to discover other parts of Adobe’s vast empire, such as its collection of fonts. The interface is a little odd at that point as you only see the fonts you’ve already downloaded and if you want to browse for more, the app sends you to your web browser to search for the ones you need. Once you’ve downloaded them they appear instantly in Creative Cloud’s font section.