Adobe Creative Cloud Express

The software is simple, and easy to use. Upon logging in, I was able to go through a bunch of prebuilt templates, establish my brand identity (colors, upload fonts, logos, etc.) and begin creating graphics.

I am a huge fan of the interface, and I enjoy the extraordinarily powerful background-remover tool. It is almost always accurate, and causes graphic creation to be quite simple.

There's a button called, "Brandify" which will automatically insert your colors, logo, and fonts into the picture you've created (or the template you've grabbed) which makes for very quick creation/editing of graphics.

I primarily use CC Express for social media graphics, and I'll say that I personally think that they're better than their competitor, Canva. Both offer nearly the same tools, and Canva is just a little bit simpler, but CC Express is cheaper by a bit ($100 for a year subscription vs. Canva's $120). But the reason I prefer CC Express to Canva is that it integrates with the Adobe suite in small quality of life things that make using this software with other products very easy and compatible.

There's really only two things I dislike about this software.

First off, it has video editing capabilities. The video editing is primarily for social media graphics, though you can do some full-blown video editing. The thing is, most people likely have this product through the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. If you do, you might as well use Premiere Rush or Premiere Pro, which are Adobe's video editors. Rush is a more powerful version than the one within Express, yet a simpler version of Pro. I don't see a use for the video editing when it's already in it's other products.

The load times can be horrendous. Most of the time I have no issues, but when I do have a loading issue, it can take minutes (the longest I've waited is 10 minutes to log in). This is rare, but it's always extremely inconvenient when it does happen. Also, if you're editing something and then your internet "hiccups" and connection changes for any reason, a popup will occur and tell you to refresh the page. Since the software saves automatically as you make edits, this generally isn't an issue. Though, occasionally, it will lose progress after a refresh, and you'll have to redo some work.

As a Social Media Director I often need to create quick graphics myself rather than bog down a graphic designer with a simple task. I found Adobe Spark, and it's great for just that, simple graphics. You can choose from a large assortment of stock images because they are attached to Adobe Stock, as well as other free stock images on the web.

I felt it was too hard to make the graphic the exact way I wanted it too. You could change the font only by using a sliding scale, in order to make changes to the text you had to click on the word box and it opens in a new screen. Additionally, the variety and of "shapes" they offer is not as vast as Canva's selection.

Adobe Spark allows me to create easily all kinds of projects, like web pages, flyers, slides, banners, videos, and much more. It's accessible from any device PC, Chromebook, and even your mobile phone. It already has a lot of beautiful premade designs and templates, The best part is that lets you share them directly on any social media with a predetermined size for better quality. With the free trial app, anyone can download it and use it for free.

It's not very detailed for video editing but is very easy to make short videos with pictures and subtitles.