Sélectionner une page

28 Amazing Things You Can Do With Adobe Creative Cloud (That You May Not Be Aware Of)

28 Amazing Things You Can Do With Adobe Creative Cloud (That You May Not Be Aware Of)


Let’s be honest here: WordPress is pretty great. Sure, it’s got a few frustrating things about it, but, overall, it’s an amazing content management system. That’s why it’s often difficult having to consider using tools outside of the platform.

Luckily for us, there is the Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) software suite. While it was met with frustration and pushback when it was first introduced, I think most people have come to realize how awesome it is. Much like WordPress, the flexibility and power of this software suite is what draws users in.

Now if you’re reading this, you already have a CC membership or you’re thinking about getting one. Either way, my guess is that you want to put this suite of software solutions to good use for your website. Regardless of your level of experience within the Creative Cloud, the following list of tips, tricks, and tutorials will do just that.

28 Amazing Things You Should Be Doing with Adobe Creative Cloud

Photoshop and Illustrator tend to get the most attention because of what they do for web developers and designers. But the Creative Cloud is much more than that. Elegant Themes touched on this topic briefly earlier this year.

That’s why the following list includes tips for many different apps. I chose to focus on those hidden gems that would be useful to the WordPress developer and designer. Especially, as if they pertain to modern design trends like animation, minimalism, and responsive design.

If you’re ready to start exploring Adobe Creative Cloud’s potential, let’s get started.

1. Create, sync, and share CC assets

Libraries

When talking about productivity apps and how to keep website assets in order, Dropbox is usually one of the first apps you’ll hear about. But whether you work alone or you collaborate with team members and/or clients the Libraries tool in CC should be your go-to from now on.

The following tutorial covers everything you need to know about what the libraries do, including:

  • Cross-app syncing
  • Asset management and the types of assets you can manage (which include files, stock photography, styles, colors, icons, and more)
  • Sharing and collaboration
  • Linking assets

Read the Tutorial

2. Export assets all at once

Export Assets

For those of you who work in Illustrator, you know how important it is to find shortcuts. You want to spend more time designing and less time on mundane tasks like exporting files for clients and team members to review.

If you haven’t used the Export Assets functionality yet, take a look at this tutorial. It’ll show you how easy it is to export multiple design assets, in multiple sizes, for different devices, and in a variety of formats, all at once.

Watch the Tutorial

3. Intuitively draw with shapes

Shaper Tool

Take a look back at this recent post on material design and you’ll see that this design trend makes use of a lot of lines, shapes, and color. If you’re as big a fan of this trend as I am, you’ve got to check out the new Shaper tool in Illustrator. It makes the entire process of drawing, merging, and editing various shapes within a single image much easier.

Watch the Tutorial

4. Design custom lettering

Custom Lettering

For designers and developers looking to add a unique flair to logos and other lettered content on their website, Illustrator will actually allow you to do that. Take a moment to read through this tutorial and you’ll learn how easy it is to create your own lettering, and then to merge them with shapes and colors for a design completely unique to your brand.

Read the Tutorial

5. Create a color palette

Recolor Artwork

While there are plenty of color palette tools available online, why limit yourself to what one tool tells you is a good color combination?

Within Illustrator you’ll find the easy-to-use Live color tool. Whether you want to select and edit a color palette for your designs or you want to work with the tool’s color harmony recommendations, you have full control over the recoloring of your artwork.

Watch the Tutorial

6. Control individual letters

Touch Type

Have you ever wanted easier and quicker control over the individual letters or characters within your design’s content? This tutorial gives a brief overview of how to use Illustrator’s Touch Type tool to adjust the scaling, kerning, and rotation of individual characters.

Watch the Tutorial

7. Developing wireframes for your website’s design

Illustrator wireframing

I know that for some developers, the creation of wireframes is a really important step in the overall process of building a new website. Wireframes help you establish a general layout (that you can run by your team or clients for pre-approval) before committing to the full-on creation and implementation of an actual design. This tutorial will show you how to get started with this in Illustrator.

Watch the Tutorial

8. Sketch designs using your finger and a mobile device

Illustrator Draw app

The Adobe Illustrator Draw mobile app is a great add-on for anyone wanting to sketch their own designs. This mobile app allows you to ditch the mouse and use your finger to draw designs, textures, characters, signatures, and more for your website. And because this app syncs with the rest of the CC, it automatically saves to your libraries for use in Illustrator (or any other app you want).

Watch the Tutorial

9. Conduct real-time reviews of content

LiveShare plugin

There is a free Photoshop plugin called LiveShare PS that enables you to share your Photoshop content in real-time with internal teams and clients. No matter what stage of the process you’re at with your site’s designs, you can share comps or full pages with others. Then as you receive feedback, you can implement those changes in Photoshop for everyone to view in real time. It’s the perfect way to collaborate, communicate, and finalize content for your website.

Watch the Tutorial

10. Insert dummy text

Lorem Ipsum

As you work on your clients’ websites, content isn’t always ready to go by the time your designs are set. And that’s okay. But rather than spend time hunting around online for Lorem Ipsum placeholder text for your mockups, why not just import it directly from within Photoshop? While this might not seem like a big deal, this can save you a lot of time in the long run.

Watch the Tutorial

11. Identify fonts from photos

Match Font

Have you ever been out and about, and noticed a really cool font that you wanted to make use of in your designs? Lucky for you, the Match Font tool in Photoshop can help. Just upload a photo that includes the font, and let the software find your match.

Watch the Tutorial

12. Reduce camera shake

Shake Reduction

For some websites, it just makes sense to use your own photography. However, there is nothing more frustrating than finding that the “perfect” photo is blurred from camera shake. Photoshop has a Shake Reduction tool to take care of this specific problem. Check out this tutorial to find out how you can bring sharpness back into your photos.

Watch the Tutorial

13. Greater photo awareness

Liquify

In a recent recap of the 13 Photoshop tutorials to help boost your web design game, two new Photoshop features were showcased. The Face-Aware Liquify tool uses facial recognition software to help enhance specific facial features. The Content-Aware Crop tool helps designers fill white space with matching details from the rest of the photo. Both of these “smart” new tools are worth taking a second look at.

Watch the Tutorials

14. Retouch images from your iOS device

Photoshop Fix app

Photoshop Fix is a free iOS app you can use on your mobile device (phone or tablet) to retouch images on the fly. Bring in any image you want to edit from your pho ne, Adobe stock, Lightroom, or your CC library and make adjustments right from your mobile device.

Watch the Tutorial

15. Create a panorama from multiple photos

Panorama

Let’s say you or your photographer took a number of photos of a landscape or cityscape. If you decide later on that you want all those photos merged into a single panorama, you can now do that with the Lightroom merge tool.

Watch the Tutorial

16. Make dramatic edits to photos

Lightroom Develop

One of the best parts about working with an application like Lightroom is that there is always room to play around. This tutorial does a great demonstration of how to use the Dehaze tool to create a more dramatic look for your photos. All you have to do is integrate strategic shading, enhanced lighting, and a hazy filter.

Watch the Tutorial

17. Fix image alignment

Upright Guided

Another great new feature you can find in Lightroom is the Upright Guided feature. If you’ve ever encountered an image that looks off-center or distorted, this tool will help you auto correct the alignment. This tutorial will cover a number of options you can use to guide your images into proper alignment.

Watch the Tutorial

18. Retain text’s original formatting

Preserve Formatting

Unfortunately, Copy + Paste isn’t a simple command you can use to transfer copy from a Word document into Adobe applications. This tutorial will cover how you can preserve your original text’s formatting when copying into Adobe applications like InDesign or InCopy.

Read the Tutorial

19. Create simple animations

Create Animation

Animations have proven to be a particularly useful part of web design, especially in easing visitors from one page to another. This tutorial will show you how to create simple and fun text and object animations to add to your website. You’ll learn how to play around with movement, timing, speed, and more.

Watch the Tutorial

20. Develop grid-based wireframes and prototypes

INDD Wireframe

Since InDesign was originally created for print designs and grid layouts, it’s also proven to be quite useful in developing wireframes and prototypes for digital design. If you prefer InDesign to Illustrator or Photoshop, know that you have the ability to create wireframes in this application as well (see #7 above). This tutorial will walk you through everything you need to know about developing mockups in InDesign.

Watch the Tutorial

21. Create responsive web layouts

Responsive fluid grid

If you want to build your website from scratch, you’ll need to know how to create responsive design without the help of a pre-built theme. This tutorial will show you how to use Dreamweaver’s Fluid Grid Layout to build a perfectly responsive design on your own.

Watch the Tutorial

22. Add and edit CSS settings in visual editor

CSS Designer

If you’re a fan of using Dreamweaver to develop your site’s designs, then you’ll find this tutorial helpful. The Dreamweaver CSS Designer tool helps developers add and adjust a design’s CSS settings in one panel while viewing the real-time changes to the design in another. The intuitive visual editor tool also helps ensure that you keep your website’s coding clean and organized.

Watch the Tutorial

23. Integrate animations within your website

Add Animation

Photoshop’s Edge Animate lets you add dynamic CSS transitions, animations, or interactivity to your website. This tutorial will show you how to export that animation file, integrate it into your web design within Dreamweaver, and preview it in your browser.

Watch the Tutorial

24. Create vector images from your photos

Capture Images

In tutorial #8, you learned how to use the Illustrator Draw mobile app to sketch your own drawings for use in web designs. This tutorial will show you how to capture images from real life using your phone’s camera and the Capture app, and then transfer them to Illustrator to develop cool-looking vector images.

Watch the Tutorial

25. Develop digital color palettes from real life

Capture Colors

This feature within Capture is a lot like #11 above, only this time you’ll be able to capture colors from your photos. If you should happen to take a photo of something with a really interesting set of colors, you can use Capture to develop a color palette and brushes from those colors. This tutorial will show you how to do that as well as how to save the palette to your library for use across all Adobe CC applications.

Read the Tutorial

26. Edit video coloring and shading

Lumetri Color

For websites that include video, it’s just as important to make sure you’ve nailed the look of your videos as you did with all your other content. In Premiere Pro, you’ll be able to make adjustments to colors and shading using presets, automatic fixes, or your own adjustments.

Watch the Tutorial

27. License fonts from Adobe

Typekit

What sort of fonts are you looking to use on your website? The Elegant Themes blog has suggested the best professional fonts, the perfect sans serif fonts for headings, and even cursive fonts to give your site some extra flavor.

If you’re already working within CC, you should take advantage of their Typekit integration. They make it super easy to license any of the 872 font families from their stock and any fonts you do license automatically sync across all your Adobe applications.

Read the Tutorial

28. License photos from Adobe

Adobe Stock

In addition to offering built-in access to the Typekit stock of fonts, Adobe also offers built-in access to their own stock photography. So if you want to cut down on the time you spend hunting through websites like Shutterstock and iStock trying to find the right image for your site’s design, license your images right from within your Adobe libraries and applications.

Read the Tutorial

Wrapping Up

There are a lot of amazing things happening with Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications—and a lot of time-saving features that could greatly benefit your website building process.

Now over to you: what is your favorite application in the Creative Cloud and what’s the coolest thing you’ve done with it?

Article thumbnail image by Your Design / Shutterstock.com



Source link