This week at Adobe Max 2011, Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) made a couple of significant announcements that show it is ready embrace cloud, mobile and social.

First of all, it announced a new initiative called the Creative Cloud, a cloud-based environment for creative professionals that includes access to cloud versions of Adobe Apps and a community of like-minded individuals where members can share their work.

In addition, Adobe announced a series of tablet apps that can use finger or stylus in the creative process. These include Adobe Photoshop; Adobe Debut, a tool for presenting ideas on a tablet to clients; Adobe Ideas, a tool for sketching ideas; and Adobe Collage, a tool for creating ideas and bringing them together in a storyboard view.

Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer at Adobe sees this as part of a big transition for Adobe to more cloud services. "Adobe Creative Cloud reinvents creative expression by enabling a new generation of services for creativity and publishing, that embrace touch interaction to re-imagine how individuals interact with creative tools and build deeper social connections between creatives around the world," he said.

The cloud tools and the tablet tools are designed to work together to give creative professionals a more modern paradigm for creating and sharing content, and helping move Adobe from a pure desktop software vendor (although they had been dabbling in cloud services prior to these announcements) to a mobile-cloud solution that many creative professionals will be looking for. And the community adds a social element to it that lets people talk and share ideas.

The cloud service includes 20 GB of storage and will eventually include access to cloud versions of all Adobe Creative Suite tools.

How well this will go over with creatives may depend on how much they charge for these tools. Adobe won't announce pricing until next month. For now, this announcement signals Adobe's willingness to move away from pure desktop software, while moving toward a strong cloud-mobile-social play and that, in itself, is significant.

For more information:
- see the Adobe press release 

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