Creative Technology Marches Forward; Will Rulers Go Away?

Adobe has been a massive force in the industry of digital creativity. The graphic design industry standard, Adobe products like Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator are responsible for most of the advertising and professional imagery you see every day. Recently pushing its loyal fan base into the cloud with the its Creative Cloud service, allowing for subscription-based access to all of the popular Creative Suite 6, Adobe isn’t going to sit on its laurels with an up-to-date distribution method. At the annual MAX conference recently, the company took out its big guns and introduced some serious hardware.

Along the same lines, Project Mighty and Project Napoleon are going to work together to threaten the pen-and-paper method of drawing. Project Mighty is a smart stylus, pressure-sensitive and able to store a wide variety of settings in the cloud for easy access when being used on various tablet devices, including the iPad. That should come as a surprise to those familiar with the popular mobile device’s accidental activation protection system, which normally doesn’t register lighter touches.

Napoleon will come as a comfort to those designers who wish traditional drafting tools like compasses and rulers were more compatible with tablet tech. Napoleon allows users to draw straight lines and arcs by combining snap tools with settings used by Mighty-like digital pens. It works independently too, allowing designers to do certain operations with their most local digital hardware; their hand.

Image via SlashGear

During the presentation, audiences were told that this technology is still firmly in the realm of research and development. Eventually set to make its way into consumer possession as a real product, the big question is how much traction this will have with the design community. Those folks usually require the best design hardware on the market, which at this point essentially means Wacom products, and don’t include personal tablet devices like the iPad. That said, with the recent demonstration of the mobile companion to Lightroom running on an iPad 2, Adobe appears confident in giving designers the freedom to bring their tools with them wherever they go.

Edited by Rachel Ramsey