Adobe and Moleskine bring paper drawing to the Mac with Creative Cloud connected notebook

Following an earlier collaboration in 2014, Adobe and accessory company Moleskine are teaming up again to deliver a new and improved Creative Cloud smart notebook. The connected paper tablet will allow creative professionals who enjoy the experience of drawing on paper to take advantage of the digital flexibility of working in Adobe Illustrator on the desktop.

The new Moleskine Paper Tablet begins with the Moleskine Pen+Ellipse, a specially designed writing tool with the ability to interpret your paper drawings as digital sketches. The pen currently allows users to import illustrations to the Moleskine Notes app for iOS.

Adobe has worked with Moleskine to make the pen compatible with Creative Cloud, meaning that your illustrations can now appear in Adobe Illustrator as you make each individual pen stroke. Special icons on each page of the new paper tablet toggle this realtime drawing mode and allow you to save your drawing to Creative Cloud.

The notebook isn’t intended to be a tool to fully realize illustrations from start to finish, but rather a jumping off point to get you started in a project. Artwork can later be manipulated and refined in Illustrator just like any normal vector shapes. Adobe and Moleskine call this “continuum between analog and digital” a simple solution to condense the steps in the creative process.

For creative professionals dissatisfied with the slippery glass display of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, the notebook might be a great compromise. Illustrator files can be exported in various formats back to iOS for use in many professional applications.

The Moleskine Paper Tablet – Creative Cloud Connected is available on Moleskine’s website and in retail stores for $34.95 starting today. The Pen+Ellipse is available on its own for $179. Adobe Illustrator requires a Creative Cloud subscription beginning at $20.99/mo after a free trial.