Creative Cloud on Chrome OS
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Creative Cloud on Chrome OS

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by Chris Smith
Creative Cloud on Chrome OS

Several years ago Adobe placed its first Creative Cloud app on Chrome OS. It was Photoshop CC and was made available exclusively for the education market. Adobe now looking to expand Creative Cloud on Chrome OS computers, often called Chromebooks. This is significant because these are smaller, less powerful computers that typically cost much less than those typically used for high-end computer graphics. Making more Creative Cloud applications available to those using Chromebook computers provides a larger possible audience for Adobe to sell it apps, while making powerful computing apps available to a more people.

Which Creative Cloud Apps Will be Available for Chrome OS

With Photoshop already available on Chromebook computers, it might be natural to assume that Adobe would expand the list to include applications such as Illustrator and Photoshop. Yet Adobe is steering-clear of its high-powered apps, and is keeping Photoshop for Chromebooks available only to the education market. Adobe is making six Creative Cloud applications available for Chromebooks. The apps are the same Creative Cloud apps currently available for Android, but will be optimized for Chromebooks. Some Chrome OS laptops are capable of running Android apps will already be able to use these in their current form, and will eventually be able to use the newer, optimized versions upon their release. Soon all Chromebooks will have access to these apps. Here are the Creative Cloud applications being made available for Chrome OS this month:

  • Photoshop Mix
  • Lightroom mobile
  • Illustrator Draw
  • Photoshop Sketch
  • Comp CC
  • Creative Cloud Mobile

While these five applications have Creative Cloud in their name, most are nothing like the fully functioning applications that run on Mac OS and Windows computers, and for which Creative Cloud courses are offered, which are more powerful and contain more functionality. Adobe Lightroom mobile is the exception to this, as it contains functions for optimizing images directly on a mobile device.

Specialized Creative Cloud versions needed for Chrome OS

The Creative Cloud applications were originally developed for operating on fully functioning computers with powerful processors, graphics capabilities, and large storage. Chrome OS computers were designed to not have any of these items, and instead relied on other computers connected across the Internet to do most of their work. The Chrome OS computers were often labeled as a thin clients. Because of this, the standard Adobe Creative Cloud apps remain on fully functioning computers, and Adobe makes mobile-specific apps for iOS and Android, and is now making these available for Chrome OS.

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.