Creative Cloud for iPad not replacing Mac or Windows
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Creative Cloud for iPad not replacing Mac or Windows

  • Published on
by Jennifer Smith
Apple and IBM team-up to design apps for iPads and iPhones

There’s growing interest in running Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) on iPad now that Apple has released the larger and more powerful iPad Pro but it won't be replacing the Mac or Windows versions of Adobe CC apps anytime soon. While you can use the iPad for many creative tasks, we’ve found that it isn’t ready to fully replace your Mac or PC computer for running Creative Cloud apps. Most of the iPad Creative Cloud apps are designed to feed creative options into the desktop versions of the Creative Cloud apps that run on Mac OS and Windows. These iPad CC apps for the iOS from Adobe supplement the Mac and Windows versions of the Creative Cloud rather than acting as a replacement or alternative. 

Creative Cloud for iPad apps available

Apple has released many apps from the Creative Cloud for iPad, with a total of seven creative apps that run on iPad, iPhone, and even Android. These include:

  • Adobe Brush CC: Use a camera on an iPad or iPhone to create a brush that you can use in the Creative Cloud apps Photoshop CC or Illustrator CC.
  • Adobe Capture CC: This Creative Cloud mobile app is for taking pictures and turning them into color libraries, brushes, and vector objects to be used in Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Adobe apps.
  • Adobe Color CC: Use this iOS CC app to create color themes that can be imported into Mac and Windows version of Creative Cloud.
  • Adobe Comp CC: This sketching iPad app along with Illustrator Draw are the closest Creative Cloud apps Adobe has created to anything on the desktop. But even this app doesn’t have the iPad replace the PC or Mac – work that is started on the iPad must be moved to a Mac or Windows computer to be completed. Comp CC makes it possible to create simple designs that can then be imported into desktop versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
  • Adobe Illustrator Draw: With drawing tools and basic brushes, simple illustrations can be created on the iPad using this Creative Cloud tool.

Creative Cloud for iPad compared to Windows and Mac

When comparing the iPad versions of the Creative Cloud apps to Windows or Mac, the iPad versions are neither comprehensive nor complete. If you are looking for the full Creative Cloud apps for the iPad, you’ll need to continue to wait. There are not complete versions of tools such as Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign for iPad. The Creative Cloud continues to rely on powerful desktop-level processors and memory in order to create or edit artwork. For this reason, American Graphics Institute is continuing to offer Creative Cloud training classes on Mac and Windows computers, and won't be making a transition to using the iPad for CC training or other Adobe classes anytime soon. The Mac and Windows versions of these Creative Cloud apps are identical, while the iPad versions supplement what's available on the desktop. Using the iPad to compliment Adobe apps on desktop and notebook computers, the best computer for Creative Cloud article looks at PC and Mac options for running the Adobe CC applications.

About the author

Christopher Smith is president of American Graphics Institute. He is the co-author of Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies and more than 10 other books on design and digital publishing. He served as publisher and editor of the Digital Classroom book series, which has sold more than one million books on topics relating to InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro and other Creative Cloud apps. At American Graphics Institute, he provides strategic technology consulting to marketing professionals, publishers designers, and large technology companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft, and HP. An expert on web analytics and digital marketing, he also delivers Google Analytics classes along with workshops on digital marketing topics. Christopher did his undergraduate studies the at the University of Minnesota, and then worked for Quark, Inc. prior to joining American Graphics Institute where he has worked for more than 20 years.