Tag Archive for: Adobe

Cyber Monday Breaks E-Commerce Record For Most Online Sales

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While Black Friday sales are in a slump, a new king of the holiday shopping season is rising. The results Cyber Monday are coming in and estimates suggest this year broke e-commerce sales records for the biggest day of online sales in US history.

According to Adobe, online sales hit over $3 billion dollars on Cyber Monday. Their report says 200 million visits to 4,500 retail websites generated $3.06 billion, rising 16 percent from last year.

Approximately 26 percent of those sales came from mobile devices, accounting for $799 million in sales. The majority of those sales ($575 million) came from Apple iOS devices. In comparison, Android devices drove just $219 million in mobile sales.

ChannelAdvisor and Custora have found similar results in their analysis of Cyber Monday sales.

ChannelAdvisor says Cyber Monday sales leaped 18 percent year over year on a same-store-sales basis. They found mobile devices accounted for 43 percent of traffic, however their results also found consumers are still relying on desktops to make the final purchase. Their analysis says 24 percent of sales came from smartphones.

Custora’s findings estimate e-commerce revenue climbed 16.2 percent from last year, with tablets and phones driving 26.9 percent of all Cyber Monday sales.

The notable increase in Cyber Monday sales may be due to bigger discounts than expected, with an average discount of 21.5 percent.

Another notable report from HookLogic says the average order value among advertisers on its platform hit $134 on Cyber Monday, just below the $137 AOV seen on Black Friday. Interestingly, carts had fewer items on Cyber Monday, which suggests consumers waited for the online sales to make their purchase.

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Adobe Illustrator Cheat Sheet Saves You Time

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ZeroLag Illustrator Shortcuts

Adobe Illustrator is almost as important to web designers and creative professionals as Photoshop. For some, it is even more essential. Most of the veterans probably have every keyboard shortcut memorized, but when you’re getting started it can take quite a while to really get the shortcuts down. Thankfully, the folks at ZeroLag put together a cheat sheet so you can always quickly find the shortcut you need. Before long, you’ll know them like the back of your hand.

Before you can use the cheat sheet, you’ll need the key to understand the image. The grey text show Adobe Illustrator tool shortcuts, while the orange text stands for an action shortcut. The tool shortcuts only require you to press the corresponding key. The orange shortcuts require you to hold the Command key, then press the action shortcut indicated by the orange text.

There are also a multitude of shortcuts not shown directly on the keyboard. Some are listed below on the graphic, but over time you’ll find even more that wouldn’t fit. They are usually found through a combination of the Command or Shift button and a specific letter key.

It can seem overwhelming trying to commit all of these shortcuts to memory, but the ones you use regularly become second nature extremely quickly. For all the others, you’ll save more time by checking the cheat sheet rather than searching through all the menus in the program.

 

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Why Are Designers Upset About Creative Cloud

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Creative CloudFor the past decade or more, Adobe and Photoshop have been staples in the vocabulary of any designer. Adobe has been by our side constantly upgrading, and draining our wallets, but not really causing much of a stir. Not even the Flash vs. Apple conflict really shook the boat that much.

Simply put, Photoshop and its partners in the Creative Suite have been the go-to applications for a huge number of the people working in web development, photography, design, and video.

With their latest new release however, that all could change.

As you may have heard, Adobe has decided to stop releasing physical software in favor of a move to a cloud-based subscription service called Creative Cloud. What you might not have heard is that there is already a petition signed by over 37,000 angry people begging Adobe to abandon their plans.

The move to the Creative Cloud would mean that Adobe would drop all support for older versions of their software, specifically the Creative Suite (They will continue to add support for CS6 for now). However, the Creative Cloud would function essentially the same as the old software. It won’t be a set of web apps, and you will still have to download and install the software to your hard drive. But, all your files and data will be in sync across multiple computers and devices.

The monthly subscription service will be $29.99 for existing CS customers, and $49.99 for new users. But, you could also buy just a single program for $19.99 a month each. For that price, you’ll also get 20GB of cloud storage.

Basically, Adobe has found a way to attack piracy and increase their profits by making users continuously pay for the software and not distribute or manufacture physical objects. And that is why users are upset. While the subscription fee is obviously a fair deal lower than the cumulative price we payed for previous releases, over time this means Creative Cloud will be much more expensive than ever before.

It also creates a new (more expensive) option for all other design software companies to follow. Adobe has always been the trendsetter in this area and it is likely even the alternatives spurned Photoshop users turn to will eventually follow suite. Or, this could be the end of Adobe as the gold standard. As Corey Siegel from Design Instruct puts it, this is Adobe’s “all in” bet.

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The Most Frequent Mistakes New Photoshop Users Make

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Adobe_Photoshop_CS4_icon.svg

After all these years and new Adobe programs, Photoshop is still the tool for designers. It is the tool of the trade no matter what style you like, whether you do digital painting, sign style design, or photo manipulation. But, Photoshop is to us like the scalpel is to surgeons; in skilled hands it is a great tool, but it can be dangerous if misused.

Unlike when a surgeon makes a mistake, it can sometimes be hard to tell when you are misusing Photoshop or creating a design others aren’t going to respond to. When you’re learning the program, there is so much at your fingertips it can be tempting to use everything, even when you don’t quite know what it does. It also offers many different solutions to problems – some better than others – so it is easy for the uninitiated to complete the task they wanted without getting the right results.

Jay Adrianna, writer for Onextrapixel, recently wrote about thirteen incredibly common Photoshop mistakes designers and photo editors make, as well as easy ways to fix them. Whether you are a beginner, or someone more used to the program looking to refine your techniques and improve your finished products, it is almost guaranteed there is something you can learn from the tips offered. As always, the key is moderation.

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Fireworks vs. Photoshop – Which Is Best For Web Design?

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Photoshop is the program for graphic design. At this point, that is considered more of a fact than an opinion. It is the standard which just about everyone that can afford it uses. It might not actually be the best for web design anymore, however.

Fireworks, originally made by Macromedia, is another Adobe product, which Harish Chouhan believes makes more sense for web design, especially with its recent integration with other creative suite software.

So why is it better? First off, it allows for much faster and easier prototyping and sketching. You don’t have to constantly worry about layers because Fireworks automatically makes each element an individual object to be edited, scaled, etc.

Fireworks also uses PNG as it’s native file type, which makes Fireworks files much more sharable than Photoshop documentaries. PNG, or Portable Network Graphics, is a patent free file format which allows for saving of multiple Meta data.

Chouhan has even more reasons you might consider switching to Fireworks. It can do almost anything Photoshop can, but it will save you time and frustration.

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