The future of creativity: Adobe delves into the metaverse and creating new collaborative communities

If there’s one thing we can be certain of, it’s that the past two years have thrown the creative industry into whole new territories. The changes we’ve seen to how creatives work and to their practice are broad and expansive. But Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer opened at the company’s Future of Creativity event with some positive forward thinking: “I feel like there has never been a better, more exciting time to be a creative person.” Following on from the last Future of Creativity event in 2019, and being four years since Scott attended a community event in London, he was the first to express how happy he was to be able to get back together as a creativity community. “A lot has changed”, Scott states “but so many of the changes have been for the better.”

Being so closely interwoven with the way and means by which creatives work, Adobe has brilliant insight into what those changes look like. “You know, there was a time when being a creative professional could be a little lonely,” Scott identifies, “but creativity is opening up in new ways. For one thing, creativity has become much more collaborative”. Moreover, the very nature of creative projects have changed – specifically, to make way for a much more social media oriented society. And so, Scott says, “social projects usually involve a mixture of different kinds of media.”

With these changes in mind, Adobe has introduced a number of updates to the Creative Cloud that will make the transition – from freelancers to small business and large enterprises – much smoother, more enjoyable and efficient. One such change is new features within Adobe Photoshop, including AI-powered innovations and Adobe Creative Cloud updates. Neural filters have been added to the photo editing breakdown, which puts cutting edge AI and machine learning into the users hands, dramatically improving complex workflows in an easy-to-use manner. This easy to use element is a core focus for Adobe; as Scott addressed, we’re currently in a time “when it makes sense for everyone to be creative”. “People who aren’t creative pros are finding that bringing creativity to their work helps them stand out [...] and if you have a part-time business, if you’re an influencer, or if you just want to rise above the noise on social media, creativity is essential.”

To make access and ease of collaboration even easier, Adobe has also updated Photoshop on the web, even extending it to mobile browser access for fast and easy reviewing and commenting. This feature also sees new editing features added, like Curves, Refine Edge, Dodge and Burn and Smart Object conversion. And the changes don’t stop here, for you budding tiktokers or Instagram reel makers, Lightroom and Lightroom Classic have been enhanced with powerful new features, including the ability to quickly trim and apply edits to video clips.

Not only exploring the ways in which it can enhance long standing features, Adobe is also leading the most exciting and innovative creative avenues, most notably, the world of 3D design and the metaverse. At its Future of Creativity event, Chantel Benson highlighted how much of a community has been created throughout the metaverse. “While Fortnite is one of the world’s most popular games, it’s also so much more than that”, she said, “people get together in Fortnite to go to a concert [...] or they work together to create their own worlds and construct games within the game.” So, the fact that Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, use Adobe Substance 3D, giving Adobe a central role in this community building, is a fact that Chantel said makes them “super-proud”.

Businesses utilising such advancements also include fashion brand Hugo Boss and Outdoor and Sportstyle brand Salomon. “The emergence of the metaverse presents exciting opportunities for the fashion world”, details Sebastien Berg head of digital excellence at Hugo Boss, “Adobe Substance 3D tools are an integral part of our approach as we execute on our plan to develop 80 per cent of our collections on a digital basis by the end of this year.”

But, whilst the argument for adopting 3D is strong, Chantel is also the first to admit that the metaverse and relevant software, for many individuals and businesses, is very “intimidating”, and seen as “too technically difficult to master”. This is where the advances to Adobe Substance 3D enter the picture. Not only has Adobe enhanced the user experience, it’s also made it a whole lot easier. Including a Native Apple M-Series chips support for Substance Painter, Designer and Sampler allows 3D content creators to work faster than ever before, while a new Modeller introduces an intuitive approach to 3D modelling that frees users from previously complex and technical constraints. If that’s not piquing your interest, we know something that will – Adobe have announced that they will be expanding access to Substance 3D to students and teachers worldwide free of charge.