Adobe Max 2021: An essential show for world’s creative pros

Adobe Max is a big deal for creatives

Adobe has announced registration for Adobe MAX 2021 is now open and free for all. The conference will take place virtually from October 26 – 28^, with plenty of interesting content for creative users.

Adobe Max: The creative event of the year?

The company has been engaged in a slew of deeply interesting developments for its creative users, particularly on Apple’s platforms and M1 Macs, so news of the event should interest most creative professionals.

Adobe’s Photoshop for M1 chips unleashed systems 1.5 times faster. “Our internal tests show that Photoshop delivers significant performance gains across the application for customers using these latest Macs,” wrote Adobe’s Pam Clark then.

Adobe Max offers over 400 sessions, keynotes, MAX Sneaks labs, and workshops, and a chance to hear from creative luminaries, product experts and celebrity speakers. Learn more about this year’s free virtual Adobe MAX in today’s blog post here. You can register for MAX here.

I can’t help but have a little speculation

It is worth noting the event is scheduled to take place in fall when Apple is also thought to be planning or to have by then already introduced new M1X-powered MacBook Pros.

I spoke earlier this year with Mark Dahm, principal product manager at  Photoshop, who said: “As the Apple silicon line-up expands into the future, having Photoshop working natively on the M1 architecture means it can be constantly tuned and optimized to take full advantage of the resource advancements that Apple silicon has to offer, without the additional dependency on Rosetta.”

Now I’m not saying Apple will introduce them by then, but let’s face it – given the outstanding performance of Adobe’s creative products on the M1 Macs, it’s going to be really, really, really interesting to see how well Adobe’s creative products work on the next-generation of Apple’s Mac processors. I, for one, can’t wait to find out what happens – if my hunch of an additional 10-20% performance improvement is correct, that’s real time and real money for the world’s creative professionals. I’m stoked.

Adobe’s event has also typically been used as a forum for really important news, such as moves to bring Illustrator and Photoshop to iPads. Last year’s announcements included more use of AI in Photoshop and Illustrator for iPad.

What you should expect at Adobe Max

Back in the non-crazy rumor world, what to expect at Adobe Max is deeply interesting on its own account. Attendance at the virtual event will provide you with (among other things) access to 29 hours of broadcasts including keynotes, over 400 sessions, live events, tutorials, giveaways and chances to interact with experts online. There are also fun things to do, competitions and more. A few highlights:

• Keynotes, technology Sneaks and presentations on the latest innovations across Adobe Creative Cloud
• Collaborative art projects and community challenges
• Hundreds of live and on-demand learning sessions for all skill levels
• Virtual networking opportunities for creatives across the globe

This year’s event will feature 11 creative tracks;

• Graphic Design
• Illustration and Digital Painting
• Video
• Photography
• UI/UX
• 3D and AR
• Social Media
• Creativity and Design in Business
• Collaboration and Productivity
• Education
• Meet the Teams

The first Adobe Max took place in Orlando in 2002 as Macromedia DevCon, becoming an Adobe event once the two companies combined. This year’s event takes place October 26 – 28^.. Perhaps I will see you there.

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