GETTING STARTED WITH ANDROID WEAR
ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD LIBRARIES MADE EASY
Have you ever experienced the frustration of searching through your files for commonly used creative assets, or having to open multiple files in different applications to get the common design elements you need for your project? Or when you’re done with your project, only to realize that you’ve ended up with outdated creative elements?
All of that will be behind you with Adobe’s latest update to its Creative Cloud suite of software. If you’re a subscriber to Adobe CC, the October updates would have enhanced your favorite applications with the library feature which helps you manage your creative assets and help your streamline your project workflow. It’s built to help designers manage and access their favorite colors, color themes, brushes, type styles, and raster and vector graphics through Creative Cloud.
Let’s run through some of the basics of Adobe’s new Creative Cloud Libraries in Adobe Photoshop CC 2014.
1) Open the Libraries panel by going to the Window menu and choosing the Libraries option.
2) Create a new library for your project by selecting Create New Library from the dropdown menu. Give it a descriptive name so that it’s easily identified once it’s synced into your Creative Cloud.
3) The icon on the bottom right of the panel will tell you if your assets are synced into Creative Cloud. Once they are in the cloud, you can access them in other applications like Illustrator and Adobe’s mobile apps.
4) To add assets into project library, select the object from the layer’s panel. Once you’ve selected the right layer, press the V key to use the move tool to drag the object and drop directly into the libraries panel. The asset will then be synced automatically into the Creative Cloud and appropriately labeled as a graphics object. If you don’t want to drag and drop, you can also click the Add Graphic icon on the lower left corner of the Libraries panel.
5) To add color, find and select the object from the layer panel. Once it’s highlighted in the layer’s panel, you can click the add color button in the Libraries panel to add it into the project library. You can see that it’s added and labeled as colors. All other colors added from now on will be grouped under colors, so it’ll make accessing your project’s color palette a whole lot easier.
6) You can also add type styles by choosing a type layer in the layer panel and click the Add Text Style button and it will be added to the library.
7) Similarly, a layer style can be added to the library. You can do this by simply selecting a layer that contains a layer style and then clicking the Add Layer Style button in the Libraries window.
8) You’ll notice by now that all these creative assets are stored in the cloud that can also be accessed in other applications. Similarly, you can add other assets to the project library from other applications like Illustrator and Adobe mobile apps too.
9) The process to apply the creative assets you’ve collected in your library into your project is very much the same. If you’re applying a text style into your project, select the appropriate text object in your layer panel and subsequently click the text style in your libraries panel. The same goes with color and layer styles.
10) An image object saved into your project library from Illustrator can also be dropped into your Photoshop project simply by dragging and dropping it from the libraries panel. If it’s a vector art, it will be automatically converted into the right format in Photoshop. As you can see from this simple exercise, Creative Cloud Libraries let you access and gather your creative assets in a single location, accessible anytime on any computer through selected applications, as long as you’re connected to the internet. When your assets are always within your control, maintaining an updated and consistent set of assets for any of your creative projects will help you streamline your workflow while making it easier to focus on your designs.