How to use CC Libraries in Adobe Illustrator CC

Hey there, Illustrator lovers, it is time for CC Libraries. We've ignored it, this panel over here, next to Properties. I've ignored it this whole course. Now it's time to get to grips with it, find out all the perks, the colors, the free images, the sharing art. Let's go and learn how to do CC Libraries now.

So it's time for Libraries. If you can't see your Libraries, go to the 'Libraries' tab. If you can't see it still, go to 'Window', go down to 'Libraries'. Now I've been purposefully avoiding Libraries during this course, I guess. It's hard to know when to squeeze everything in, but it's time for Libraries now. Now by default, you've probably gone on 'My Library'. At the top here, if you're a heavy user like me, we got lots of libraries. So we're going to start by creating a Library. My library's like, it's full of junk like no one’s does. Let's say I'm working with a new client, and I click on this, I'm going to go to 'Create New Library'. In here, it says 'Create New Library'. I'm going to give it a name, say it's a client name. I'm working for myself, Daniel Scott, click 'Create', there's nothing in here. What goes in there is quite clear, drag and drop.

So I've got this fox here, I'm going to drag and drop him in. Also, know that I'm working from the CC Libraries file. You can open it, or just work on your own file, it's up to you. I've got this thing, called 'Artwork 1'. I'm going to double click it, and call it 'Fox'. So I've got a bit of Artwork. Now, why is this useful? It means that if I open up a new document in Illustrator, completely new one, it doesn't matter, this Library is still active. I can drag it out, and start using it. There it is there. Awesome, huh!

What's also really nice about it, is I can go out to-- it's missing a chunk. How is it missing a chunk? It didn't grab while I dragged it across, it's part of the fox. What I'd like to do now is-- I'll show you one of the perks, it's that it's across software. If I open up 'Photoshop', and I want to use my fox, my part fox in here, I can go to 'CC Libraries'-- So I'm going to go to 'Window' and go to 'Libraries'. Up the top here, I've got all my libraries, and there's a new one here, called 'Daniel Scott'. There's my half a fox, drag him in. And position him, 'return'. It's brought it through. It's vector, it's awesome.

You can do the other way as well. I can click on this background image, and because Photoshop is more of an image processing program it will be more appropriate to be dragging images into the Library from Photoshop. I'm going to click him, drag him. There it goes there, this is my bike. Now if I go to Illustrator, I've got my bike. I can drag it out, start using it. Same with InDesign, if I go to InDesign and open up a new document, 'CC Libraries', here it is there. 'Daniel Scott', these guys are here, drag him into this. I use this for After Effects, all of these, XD, Animate, Muse Dreamweaver, to a degree. Definitely Premiere and After Effects. Not so much Character Animator, but lots of these ones. Dimension, really good for using CC Libraries. Nice interconnection.

Now there'll be a perk for it. Let's say we've used it in a few products now-- I'm going to go to Illustrator. Actually what I'm going to do is double click on the 'Library Item'. Because I started over here first of all, I'm going to copy the bits that I lost. Actually I'm going to grab the whole thing, copy it. So this is not connected anymore. That was kind of like, Parent. We created this guy here, fox, but they're no longer connected. So if I adjust this, it doesn't change this one at all, but if I double click 'fox', it will open up in Illustrator. I'm going to add the rest of my fox. I'm going to select all, delete him. Add the rest of my fox, get him to fit in the little box that he's got. Hit 'Save'. Hopefully now-- actually, just do some other adjustments, let's do some 'color'. I'm just going to use this color, and grab the partially blue dock. I'm going to jump out to InDesign, magic, Photoshop, magic. They're all adjusting.

So it's really handy if you've got graphic. It needs to be consistent across lots of designs. Maybe a logo. There are times though, when you're like, "Don't update, please." The way to get around that is, in all of the programs, when you're dragging out of the library, hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, or the 'Alt' key on a PC. What that does is it breaks the links. Now if I go back into Illustrator I'm still in that editable-- you kind of know you're in an editable one, either by double clicking it, or it's got this crazy name. So I'm going to back in here, and undo it. Put it back to what it was, hit 'Save', jump back into Photoshop. You'll notice that, that one updated. Done here, but this one didn’t because I used the Alt, or Option, when I dragged it out. That's true of all of the programs, InDesign, Illustrator, After Effects Any of them, just hold down the Option, or the Alt key and that will break the link.

Other cool things you can do is-- from any of the programs, but let's say this one here, I want these fox colors to use them for different products, right? So I'm going to select on this chunk. I'm going to go down here, and I got the option of adding the graphic. Instead of dragging it in, you can click on 'Add Graphic', this way. I don't want to add the graphic, I already got it. What I want to do is add the Fill color. It's actually a Swatch, you can see there. It's got its Hexadecimal number, I'm going to go through you. I want to add. Can't we go and have them all in one big go yet? I think we can, so I'm just going to, individually. Click on the different pieces. Those are all the colors I want to use. That means, that again. In Photoshop, here's the colors. I can start working using these ones across them all.

Another cool thing you can do is you can jump to 'color.adobe.com'. I'm going to jump to it now. Now for me, for some reason when I sign in today, of all days, when I'm recording, it doesn't want to log me in. For some reason, just with Adobe Color. When you are logged in, you can find a color you like. So I'm at 'color.adobe.com'. I've gone to 'Explore'. It's great. Find colors, click, download. And when you log in, it says, "Would you like to save it to a library?" You say, "Yes," you pick the Daniel Scott library. And it downloads it, and it magically appears in here. Like some of my other libraries, it's full of MF. You can see, there's some of those colors that I've got in here. So it will just appear there. Trust me.

Another cool perk for using CC Libraries. I'm going to go back to our file here. Click on this text once. And down, on the '+' button here I can add the text. I can add that as a graphic, it will just be like a picture. One of the text, whereas this is actually the raw text. You can click 'Add'. It means I can go to some of these other documents here and drag it out. Not only is it a picture of text but it's kind of restylable, reshaped. You can see, it's editable text. It might be good for something like-- I use it mainly for things like Terms & Conditions or something like, our address that I use quite often. So, it could be handy. Same with this. There's also, like-- this 'Text Fill', actually a strange gray color that I use. You can add that as well. You can name your colors if you like.

Another perk for the libraries is up here, in this Hamburger menu, click on him, and there's one that says 'Collaborate'. That's cool, because I get to share with other people, from Adobe. Not from Adobe, other Adobe users. So say I've got people that I work with, other designers, I can go to that, and share them this library. We all work from the same library. You can kind of tell, say, stock images, I share with one of my colleagues, you can see the double head there, same with Adobe logos. Because we as a company, we're a certified training center, so we all share some of these colors, and all these logos. So one person just adds them to the library and we all get to share them. It's perfect.

One last thing, and it's not technically the libraries, but it's kind of all tied together with the amazing Creative Cloud. Up here, on my Mac, this Creative Cloud icon… on a PC, it's in the bottom right, somewhere. So I've got this one. We're going to go 'Assets', 'Market'. This is really handy for Illustrator, because it's-- these are commercial use images that Adobe have given to us, that I can use for a business, for free. They're just really good Illustrator style stuff. Mainly good for things like logos and icons. Say I need a picture, I've got to draw a picture of a house. It came to mind. You can see in here, all of this stuff, ready to go. You can scroll down, and actually there's a whole load of houses in here. Find the style you want. You could obviously draw one pretty easily but let's say we want this house, click on it.

What you're really looking for is, that it's not a JPEG. You're looking for one that's SVG, that's the Scalable Vector Graphic. It's something that Illustrator likes. If it's a JPEG, it's kind of mainly for something for Photoshop where it's kind of pixels bit. SVG is the magic one. Click 'Download', it's going to say, "What library?" Click on that one. Magically, over here, hopefully, you're going to have Daniel Scott. There's my house, it's SVG. I can drag it out. Check out this, if I drag him over here, he's all bits and pieces. I might right click him, I can ungroup him.

We're going to run into that problem we had a little earlier, it's still ungrouped. How do I break him apart? We could just go to 'Object', 'Compound Path', and 'Release', or, grab the 'White Arrow'. I can just click on individual bits in here. Let's say, the color, I want to change to one of these. Look at this, he's using all the library goodness. It's downloading stuff, changing the color with our Library colors. We can use this commercially. There's loads of stuff in there, do searches. Mainly for icons, and kind of Clip Art style graphics. There's a few other things in that Market as well.

One last thing for free icons. That's it for libraries, but there's one last thing, that Market thing. It's amazing for icons. There's one other site I'd like to show you. It's this site here, called Iconfinder. I use it quite a lot. The Adobe Market is brilliant, but this one here, say I need a house. It has one extra perk. First of all, there's some paid stuff. By default, it's any-- that's what it comes up with. You can spend all of $2, and get an icon. I go to 'Vector', because I want it to be ready for Illustrator. And I want it to be free. The option down here is, I want it to be 'No link back'. That means it's commercial use, and I don't have to attribute anybody, just use it. And in here, what I like, same kind of thing, lots of icons. Let's say I like this house. I like this house. When I click on it, if I scroll down a bit, it's often part of a larger icon group. That's some really handy stuff.

There's a bunch of them you can find, and use. Iconfinder's pretty cool, Adobe Market is brilliant. That is going to be it for CC Libraries. They're pretty cool, huh! Bye now.