Adobe Creative Cloud

Overview

Adobe Creative Cloud is available to all maintained schools in Wales through Hwb at a discounted price. It provides access to over 20 professional creative apps, supporting:

creativity
design
digital storytelling
industry standard digital skills

These tools can help learners bring their ideas to life, using the same software used by creative professionals.

Using Creative Cloud at home and at school

Learners and teachers can access Creative Cloud on their devices at home by signing in with their Hwb login. This enables flexible, remote access to creative tools.

Creative Cloud supports active engagement in the classroom and beyond. It aligns with GCSE and A Level Digital Technology qualifications.

Adobe Creative Cloud includes industry favourites such as Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, InDesign and more.

Please refer to Adobe’s system requirements and installation guides to find out on which devices and operating systems you can use Creative Cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud apps

Adobe Photoshop

Learners and teachers can use Photoshop for creative projects including:

photo editing
compositing
digital painting
animation
graphic design

Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate allows users to:

animate almost anything
publish to multiple platforms in almost any format and reach viewers on any screen
design interactive animations for games, TV shows and the web
bring cartoons and banner ads to life
create animated doodles and avatars
add action to e-learning content and infographics

Adobe Animate is a key application for Unit 2 of the Digital Technologies qualification.

Acrobat Pro

Acrobat Pro helps learners and teachers to easily create, edit, and share PDFs. It's great for organising class materials, filling out forms, and adding comments or digital signatures.

Adobe InDesign

This page design software allows learners to bring any topic to life by creating:

creative posters
eBooks
digital magazines

Adobe XD

Learners and teachers can use Adobe XD to design, build, share and test prototypes for websites, mobile apps, games, and more.

Adobe Premiere Rush

Premiere Rush makes it easy for learners and teachers to create and share online videos and make lessons more interactive and fun.

Adobe Substance 3D

Adobe Substance 3D allows you to create, texture, and render 3D content. It enables learners and teachers to explore 3D design workflows used in industries such as:

gaming
animation
architecture
product design
visual effects

It is often integrated into education to support digital creativity, design thinking and STEAM learning.

Access and licensing

Learners and teachers currently have free access to Adobe Express through Hwb. Adobe Creative Cloud is not a core Hwb service and is not automatically available to all users.

We have worked in close partnership with Adobe to make Creative Cloud available at a significantly reduced cost for teachers and learners in maintained schools in Wales.

Minimum device requirements

Before purchasing licences for Adobe Creative Cloud, please be aware that the various Adobe applications have different minimum device requirements. (For example, memory, storage, and graphics). We recommend that schools speak with their local authority or education technology support partner to discuss their requirements before purchasing licenses. Please refer to the minimum requirements for Creative Cloud as outlined on the Adobe support site.

How schools can get licenses

All schools will get ‘taster’ licenses. Taster licences will be distributed depending on the type of school.

Nursery, primary, special schools and PRUs will get one licence each. Middle and secondary schools will get 5 licences each.

All maintained schools can place orders for additional licenses with their local authority. If you want to access the significant cost savings via Hwb, the nominated local authority representative must place the order with the EdTech Service.

License terms run in parallel with the academic year. Orders must be placed annually by either:

end of July
end of October

This ensures that Digital Champions can apply licenses to learner and staff accounts. For more information on this process please contact your local authority.

Any orders not processed in advance of the academic year or in the October window will need to wait until the following academic year.

How to allocate Adobe Creative Cloud licenses to learners and staff

Adobe Creative Cloud orders will be processed once each order window has closed at the end of July or end of October. Licences will then be available in the school's user management portal within approximately 2 weeks.

Digital Champions and Hwb administrators can allocate these licences to any learner or MIS staff accounts in the User Management Portal. They can also reallocate licenses if required.

Individual users

Log in to Hwb and go User Management.
Click Administration: Manage Adobe CC Licences.
You will see an overview of the allocation of licences for your school. This is followed by a search box and a list of learners and MIS staff. Use the relevant Search term field to find the user. For example, type their surname and click search.
Click Allocate Licence next to the relevant user.
It may take up to 1 hour for the licence to be applied to the user.

Group of users

Log in to Hwb and go to User Management.
Click Administration: Manage Adobe CC Licences.
You will see an overview of the allocation of licences for your school. This is followed by a search box and a list of learners and MIS staff. Click on the tick box to the left of the relevant staff members.
Click Allocate Licence at the top of the list.
It may take up to 1 hour for the licence to be activated for the user.

How to deploy Adobe Creative Cloud

You can create Adobe Creative Cloud packages in the Adobe admin console.

How to get access to the Adobe admin console

Local authority EdTech members

Contact the Hwb Service desk to:

access the Adobe admin console
get allocated the deployment administrator role

School technicians

Contact your local authority EdTech representative to:

access the Adobe admin console
get allocated the deployment administrator role

Deployment administrator

A deployment administrator can create any number of packages to suit different deployment needs. These packages can be downloaded and deployed via any mechanism that supports .exe or .msi installations, or .pkg installers on MacOS, before they expire.

The Adobe enterprise and teams admin guide explain how to do this.

Note, that all product packages are visible by all deployment admins. There is no segregation for different local authorities or schools.

Adobe update server

The Adobe Update Server Setup Tool (AUSST) is available to provide a caching solution for the installation files and updates. The packages can be configured to use the local server by specifying it in Preferences in the Admin console (these preferences are per user).

Guidance on using the Adobe Admin Console.

How to sign into Creative Cloud

Go to the Adobe Creative Cloud homepage.
Click sign in.
Enter your Hwb account username@hwbcymru.net
Enter your Hwb account password.
From this page you can view All apps to download.
On a personal device you can now choose the apps you wish to install.

Schools should consult with their local authority about managing the deployment of apps across the school network.

Revoking a licence

Digital Champions and Hwb administrators can manually remove a licence:

Log in to Hwb and go User Management.
Click Administration: Manage Adobe CC Licences.
You will see an overview of the allocation of licences for your school. This is followed by a search box and a list of learners and MIS staff. Use the Search term field to find the user. For example, type their surname and click Search.
Click Revoke Licence next to the relevant user.
The license will become available within 1 hour. It can then be re-allocated to another user.

License duration

Licenses last for one year and will automatically be revoked annually in August.
Digital Champions must plan to allocate licenses at the start of each academic year.
Licenses purchased mid-academic year will run until the next renewal in September.
Licenses purchased in July will cease at the end of August.
Licenses purchased in October will cease at the end of August.
Schools only pay for the length of time a licence is live in any year. The time and cost are prorated.

Automatic deactivation for leavers

If a learner or member of staff leaves, their account will automatically be deactivated and their license removed.

This happens automatically once someone is marked as a leaver in the MIS, after the Provisioning Client runs. The licence can then be allocated to another user in the User Management Portal.

Further support

For more information on using Adobe Express please visit our Help and Support centre or join the Hwb Digital Community.