Adobe representative Mike Riley discusses new features to the Creative Cloud during the Think & Drink workshops in Annenberg, Wednesday. (Neon Tommy / Celeste Alvarez)

Adobe newbies and experts gathered within the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at USC to check out the latest features available for students free of charge.

Held within the Geoffrey Cowan Forum, Adobe Systems technologists unpacked the company’s Creative Cloud software during the school’s Adobe Days showcase to inform students and faculty about the company’s newest and most useful tools for Annenberg students.

From video editing to web design, Adobe System’s Creative Cloud brings together new and familiar applications under one roof, with updates just a click away. 

 “What I noticed was really great about the event was students haven’t downloaded the (Adobe Creative Cloud) yet,” said Mike Riley, Adobe's higher education account manager. “Their coming in looking for information and hopefully leaving with the desire to go download it.”

Inspired by her love for Photoshop, strategic public relations graduate student Di Huang explained why she was excited about the free software. 

“It’s really convenient for us because we have so much graphic design and news editing work to do so I think it’s very useful that we can take advantage of this opportunity,” Huang said. 

First year communication major Olivia Chui also shares Huang enthusiasm for photo editing and decided to attend the workshop on Wednesday. 

“In the past I only worked with Photoshop, Illustrator and Bridge, but they showed you how to use other applications like Muse and InDesign, which I never had exposure to so it was pretty cool,” Chui said.

Adobe Muse was among the most buzzed about new applications within the Creative Cloud because of its ability to create webpages without the need for users to be too tech savvy, explained Sebastian Distefano, Adobe Systems Higher Education Development Manager.

“Making webpages is not an easy thing to do, you have to know how to code, you have to know the technical side to it, but if you’re a communications student who needs to put up a webpage and deliver a message it can be very intimidating to do that on the web, but Muse is a tool that uses the average skills you might be familiar from Microsoft Word or InDesign, and it allows you to build a webpage without having to know all the technical stuff,” Distefano said. 

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is another software goodie packed in the Creative Cloud that Distefano and Riley are both suggesting students look out for. 

“Lightroom is one of those tools that is a complete work flow for photography,” Distefano added. 

“Photoshop allows you to manipulate and create photography, but Lightroom allows you to manage the whole process from start to finish and even allows you to map your photos and create slideshows and books,” Riley said. 

Although the software takes a couple hours to fully download, the tools and programs within the Creative Cloud are said to come in handy for Annenberg students looking to stay on top of their tech driven courses. 

The aptly named Adobe Creative Cloud Think & Drink workshops will be continuing into next week for any remaining fence-sitters.

Staff reporter Celeste Alvarez can be reached here or follow her on Twitter here.