Last year, we wrote about Canva taking on Adobe with its desktop app. Then in October, we wrote about how Canva is killing it.

We are here for this competition, since we get to reap rewards with some excellent software.

Adobe re-branded and re-approached Spark and just launched it as Creative Cloud Express, which is likely the most direct aim we've seen Adobe take at Canva’s market yet. On the Adobe blog, Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky wrote:

“Creative Cloud Express draws on our decades of experience… It makes the core technology in our industry-leading products… available with just a few clicks — and with no learning curve… [It’s] is an app that only Adobe could develop because it takes some of the magic from our professional creative technology and makes it accessible to anyone.”

I.e. Adobe wants you to remind you that it’s the long-time expert in this space. Even though its Creative Cloud Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) has focused on design professionals, Adobe’s Ashley Still told TechCrunch that the company has seen a lot of growth from non-professional users in recent years. So Adobe took Creative Cloud Suite's world-class design software and gave it a non-professional-friendly experience.

Belsky also shared example after example of use cases from non-expert designers, from a tattoo artist sharing his latest design to a student creating an interactive history report.

The product features certainly resemble a Canva experience. There’s a library of templates, background removal, filters, convert to PDF, and much more. You can also use the integration with Creative Cloud Libraries “to take assets from Photoshop and Illustrator that maybe a colleague created for them and then re-use them in the Creative Cloud Express app.”

Creative Cloud Express is free and you also can pay to unlock premium features, like access to Adobe’s 175 million stock photos and 20,000 fonts.

After you test it out, don’t forget to let us all know what you think in the comments. Thrilled to see Adobe step up their game for non-professionals, or will you be sticking to Canva (or another competitor)?

Spatial, the startup that introduced us to its Augmented Reality platform for work three years ago, has pivoted to the metaverse with on focus on NFTs.

“Over the past year… we noticed artists and creators were flocking to Spatial to build beautiful virtual galleries & event spaces to showcase their work! Creators have voiced loudly and clearly that… we make it super easy for them to sell and showcase their work in the metaverse.... So, we’ve evolved the platform away from work to focus on creators 100%!”

The team is looking for your feedback, so dive into the metaverse (it's free), and chime in.

How many things do you have in your online shopping cart or bags? Who knows. They’re probably spread out among the internet, lost in your open tabs. Carrot is a new browser extension that finds all your open carts and gives them a home so you can return to what you were looking at later with ease.