Creative tension: Adobe Creative Cloud Express challenges Australia’s Canva

Adobe has released a software platform that targets the market of successful Australian start-up Canva.

Adobe Creative Cloud Express.

US giant Adobe has released a creative software platform that targets the market of successful Australian start-up Canva.

Canva is one of the world’s most valuable start-ups with a $55bn valuation, thanks to its creative graphic design platform which lets even novice users create presentations, posters, graphics, documents, videos, social media posts and print productions. Canva is available in more than 200 countries.

Canva was founded in 2013 and for years operated uncontested in a consumer graphics market traditionally dominated by Adobe whose network of separate apps for separate tasks was too complex and unwieldy for some users. Canva thrived.

Now Adobe is out to capture market share with a platform similar to Canva’s offering called Creative Cloud Express.

Adobe describes Cloud Express as a unified web and mobile platform that lets users create presentations, stories, marketing materials like logos, flyers, banners, and more without complexity.

It says the platform inherits sophisticated tools imported from high-end products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Premier Pro. For example, “quick actions”, powered by Adobe’s artificial intelligence engine Sensei, can remove background features from photos, trim and merge videos, turn videos into GIFs and convert/export PDFs in a few clicks.

Creative Cloud Express templates

It says free users can access up to one million images and other assets, thousands of templates, and dozens of fonts. Premium plans start at $US9.99 per month (or $US99 per year) and offer advanced editing and premium content, such as 175 million royalty-free stock images and 20,000 fonts.

It says Cloud Express will be packaged as part of Creative Cloud plans for millions of existing Adobe users and free for children from kindergarten to Year 12.

Adobe chief product officer and executive vice president Scott Belsky wouldn’t discuss the looming ‘creative tension’ with Canva. But he said there was an obvious market for design by non-professionals.

“We‘ve been building products for the non-professional creative for probably the last six or seven plus years, and we’ve had non-professionals in our funnel and using our products for decades,” he said.

“What we‘ve started to realise is that we need to make these (applications) far more simpler and accessible because there’s a creative revolution now. Everyone’s trying to stand out whether they’re students or people in the workplace, or people in social media, etc.

“Now is the time to build a multimedia experience, where all this comes together, and we started to bring a lot of the best of Adobe to bear and so that‘s what I think you’re seeing.”

He said the need to service non-professionals wasn’t new. Photoshop Express had been in market for at least five years and had tens of millions of users. Similarly mobile design app Adobe Spark had been available for at least six years.

Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president, Adobe Creative Cloud

He expected Cloud Express to roll out in about 15 languages. Teams on the ground in countries would build content relevant to their specific geography.

He pointed to his own background as co-founder of online portfolio platform Behance formed in 2005 which built a platform for creative people which had 29 million creators worldwide.

He acknowledged that some users found Adobe products had “ a learning curve that they‘re not willing to endure if they want to get something done quickly”.

“We are certainly excited to make sure that we serve a much larger segment of customers better. Our mission is creativity for all.”

Mr Belsky said he believed the creative market was shifting from template-based design to creativity where people make their content look different, as opposed to a template that other hundreds if not thousands of people are using.

“It’s always fine to start from content, to start from something as opposed to nothing. That‘s something that this customer base wants. I just can’t help but wonder if the future is more about people looking different from one another as opposed to the same.”

He said the depth of stock held by Adobe gave it a big advantage over competitors, such as its “unparalleled font collection” amassed over the years.

He said Adobe had a rich roadmap of development ahead for Cloud Express including a version for business and enterprise in 2022. Customers might create thumbnail versions of designs in Cloud Express before fully developing them in Photoshop.

Adobe recently announced an agreement to acquire ContentCal to expand its social media capabilities. It says it will quickly start working to integrate these capabilities into Creative Cloud Express.

Adobe Creative Cloud Express is available as apps and on the web from today.