Hasta La Gadget!

Who would have thought that Adobe would churn out hardware apart from software that they are so famous for? Adobe originally shared their vision for the Creative Cloud at MAX, where they claimed that this would open up the door for innovation and ultimately, help empower a new generation of creative folk. Of course, in order to make that vision come to pass, Adobe has decided to dip their toes into the world of creative hardware, and in this particular milestone, Adobe has introduced the idea of two devices – the cloud pen known as Project Mighty as well as the digital ruler that they call Project Napoleon. In order to bring both devices to pass as part of our reality, Adobe has teamed up with Adonit, who happens to be an awesome band of manufacturers that also believe in the power of creative devices that are paired with apps and services. The Adobe Mighty and Napoleon are tipped to ship sometime in the first half of next year.

In an early demonstration of Project Mighty, this unique creative pen happens to be pressure sensitive, which allow the artist in you to draw out natural and expressive lines. Not only that, the Project Mighty will be hooked up to the Creative Cloud, which enables one to tote one’s favorite personal digital assets wherever he or she goes, in addition to brushes and colors, not to mention the ability to copy and paste across devices, among others. No longer do you have to make the either-or decision of having the accuracy, expressiveness and immediacy of pen and paper while sacrificing the wonders of the Creative Cloud. Folks who are familiar with Wacom’s digitizer tablet should be able to resonate with Project Mighty right from the get go.

Needless to say, pricing and availability details remain unclear, but rest assured, Adobe will reveal additional information in due time.

Press Release
[ Adobe takes to new hardware like Project Mighty and Napoleon copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Adobe surprised everyone by showing off a new hardware effort today at its annual MAX conference, including Project Mighty and Napoleon. Mighty is a pressure-sensitive digital pen that works with tablets and stores a wide variety of settings and preferences in the cloud. Adobe showed it off working on an iPad, and it looked similar to what we’ve seen from existing pressure-sensitive input devices from other companies, but with tighter integration into Adobe products.

It can pull in stored Kuler color palette themes from Creative Cloud, for instance, as well as brush settings and a cloud clipboard that stores assets you’ve created previously for use in new drawings. Moving from tablet to tablet preserves the settings associated with your pen, which makes it possible to take everything from tablet to tablet.

Napoleon looks a little like a modern Apple remote, but allows you to easily draw straight lines and arcs via snap tools combined with digital pens like Mighty. It’s almost like having traditional drafting tools including squares and triangles, but better suited to digital media. For precise drafting and more serious, demanding graphics work, these two tools in tandem should help push creativity on mobile devices quite a bit further than what we have available today.

The Mighty pen itself looks similar to something like the Jot Touch 4 pressure sensitive pen, but with full access to Adobe’s Creative Cloud services behind it. It’s a little like an entire artist’s box in a single device, judging by what Adobe has shown us on stage today. It also takes advantage of non-stylus touch, too, in a way that looks novel, allowing users to do things like erase with their free hand. But when paired with Napoleon, it becomes much more powerful than what we’ve already seen, which should really push the envelope on mobile creativity.

The pen boasts an LED on the back that can display different colors depending on what a user is doing with it, and there’s a button for connecting via Bluetooth. The ruler has two touchpoints on its underside to give the tablet its orientation, and the pen has managed to make Apple’s iPad recognize even small touches, which it actively tries to ignore using its built-in accidental touch software. Adobe isn’t saying exactly how it pulled that one off, however.

This is still essentially a project in the R&D phase, Adobe noted, but we will definitely see it materialize down the road as a real product, they said. The real question will be how this can compare to for-purpose devices like the Wacom series of tablets, which are much better than anything else out there in terms of pressure sensitivity, latency and overall ability to mimic the experience of working with traditional artists’ materials.