Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer for Adobe, announced and demonstrated the Adobe Touch Apps series at the company's Max conference, being held this week in Los Angeles.

All the apps address different needs in the realm of digital content creation, allowing users to work on their creations in ways that they could only do before via desktop applications, or by hand.

Touch is the "next giant leap in human-computer interaction," Lynch said, comparing the interface, now used on tablets and phones, to the previous major changes in the way people worked with computers, such as the introduction of the mouse and the keyboard.

"Before computers, people were using paint brushes, scissors, pencils. You were able to directly interact with the work you were creating," Lynch said. "The era of mice and keyboards abstracted you from the work you were creating -- you had to think abstractly about how you were creating it. Now with touch, you are coming back to physical interaction of creating the media directly, and removing that layer of abstraction."

"This will be a big, big empowering thing for all of us," Lynch said. "We are embracing this move. This is the first time in 20 years we are rethinking our creative tooling."