Author: Braden Hamilton
ITS Communications Intern
Summer 2025
Adobe is the ultimate toolkit for all kinds of editors. Whether you’re working with photos, videos, audio, graphics, illustrations, articles, papers, or social media posts, Adobe offers everything you’ll need in one place.
According to Adobe, their four most popular apps are:
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- Premiere Pro
- Express
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is powerful image-editing software that can create, enhance, and manipulate digital images. In Photoshop, you’ll have access to a plethora of tools that can help you retouch images, add masks, create filters, and more.
Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is an industry-standard graphic design application. It’s ideal for creating logos, icons, infographics, packaging, and other scalable graphics. The key factor that sets Illustrator apart from other graphic design applications is its use of vector graphics, which are mathematical paths that allow you to create images of any size and maintain image quality at any size.
Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is a professional video editing software application used for editing videos, movies, documentaries, and online content. It features timeline-based editing, helping users cut, trim, and arrange all within a single timeline. Premiere Pro also integrates audio and video enhancement tools, allowing users to do all necessary editing within a single application.
Express
Adobe Express is a web design application where you can quickly create graphics, videos, PDFs, and other visual content. Express is commonly compared to design app Canva, except Express allows you to easily access your other Adobe content, making it simple to integrate designs, graphics, logos, photos, and typography from other Adobe software. Express also has generative AI built into the app through Adobe Firefly, allowing you to utilize the high-tech tool in your designs.
How to Access
There are two ways employees can access their Adobe account:
- For university-owned devices, if not already installed – Go to Self Service on a Mac and install Creative Cloud. Go to Software Center on Windows and install Creative Cloud.
- For personal devices – Sign in to Adobe.com using your university email address and password and select the “work or school” account option when prompted. From there you can download the desired application to your personal computer.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact the ITS helpdesk at 540-458-4357 or help@wlu.edu.
