Advanced Use Of CC Libraries In Adobe InDesign CC

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Course contents
SECTION: 3
Creative Cloud APP 5:45
SECTION: 12
Workflow Speed Tips 20:41
SECTION: 17
Photoshop & Illustrator 13:32
SECTION: 22
Exporting & Printing Tricks 8:17

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Course info

74 lessons / 9 hours Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hi there, my name is Dan. I am an Adobe Certified Instructor and an Adobe Certified Expert for InDesign and I work as a professional graphic designer. This course is about advanced features, productivity & workflow speed tricks using Adobe InDesign. 

This course is not for people brand new to InDesign. It’s for people who already know and understand the fundamentals. 

If you are already happy adding text & images to InDesign documents then this course is for you. Even if you consider yourself a heavy user, I promise there will be things in here that will blow your InDesign mind. 

You’ll learn advanced font tricks using Typekit & Opentype fonts, font grouping & font pairing. Mastering colour features like the colour theme tool and colour modes as well as professional proofing for colours for print. We’ll set permanent defaults for fonts, colours & will learn how to turn hyphenation off for good, once and for all.  

What would an advanced InDesign course be without all the tactics to fully control paragraphs, auto expanding boxes, spanning & splitting columns. You’ll become a Styles master, using nested styles, grep styles, next styles & advanced object styles.  

We’ll make beautiful charts & graphs for your InDesign documents. You’ll learn the pros & cons of various digital distribution methods including Interactive PDF’s, EPUBs & the amazing Publish Online. 

You’ll become a master of long, text heavy documents, autoflowing, primary text frames & smart text reflow, cross referencing, indexes, text variables & the InDesign book feature. There is entire section dedicated to how to speed up your personal workflow & how to speed up InDesign and get it running super fast. 

We look at interactive forms & scripts. There is just so much we cover and I want to share everything here in the intro but I can’t. Have a look through the video list, there is an amazing amount we cover here in the course. 

If you’re one of those people using InDesign and you know there is probably a better way, a faster way to work then this is your course. 

Daniel Walter Scott

What are the requirements?

  • You will need a copy of Adobe InDesign 2018 or above. But you find that 95% of all the features in this course will work with earlier version of InDesign (e.g. CS6). A free trial can be downloaded from Adobe.

What am I going to get from this course?

  • 70 lectures 5+ hours of well structured content. 
  • Create PDF Forms
  • Master Long Documents.
  • Advanced Fonts
  • Master Styles
  • Shortcut Sheet
  • Create Charts & Infographics
  • Create Interactive Documents
  • Workflow Tactics
  • Shortcuts & Speed Tips
  • Advanced Creative Cloud Features
  • Tips for working with Photoshop & Illustrator
  • Using Scripts 
  • Exporting, Prepress & Printing tricks 
  • You will get the finished files so you never fall behind. 
  • Downloadable exercise files & cheat sheet. 
  • Forum support from me and the rest of the BYOL crew. 
  • Techniques used by professional graphic designers. 
  • Professional workflows and shortcuts. 
  • A wealth of other resources and websites to help your accelerate your career. 

What is the target audience?

  • This course is for people who already know InDesign and want to take their skills and speed to the maximum level. 
  • This is an advanced InDesign course, so you’ll need basic InDesign skills to find this course useful. 
  • This course is perfect for anyone that already knows how to insert images & add text. 
  • If you a completely new to InDesign try my InDesign Essentials course before starting this one.
  • This course is perfect for anyone that has completed my InDesign Essentials course.

Course duration 7 hours 45 mins + your study.
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Downloads & Exercise files

Download Exercise Files

Transcript

Hi there, in this video we're going to show you how to use CC Libraries in advanced features. We're going to show you how to add Colors and Paragraph Styles, easy peasy. We're going to show you how to work interconnected with something like Illustrator. We're going to break the connection through the Libraries. We're going to show you how to collaborate with other Adobe users. I'm also going to show you how to send it out to maybe clients that don't have any Adobe skills, that's quite useful. They get cool little interfaces like this, where they can see, and download colors and images without any Adobe login, plus lots of other things. I promise, it's going to be interesting. All right, let's go check it out now in InDesign.

So first up, let's open up a file. It's in '08 CC Libraries', there's only one file in there. It's called 'Maynooth Locations'. Click 'OK'. So you might have already created a Style, CC Libraries, and made it a Style. If you haven't, go to 'Create New Library', I created one earlier, but I've gone and deleted everything through it because I want this to be a little stand-alone video. To add colors, it's pretty easy, click on this guy, and say, over here, '+', you got the option of adding the graphic which is just the square, with the color inside of it, but I actually just want the Fill color, please. So I'll click on this guy, go down here, and click on this one here. You can be a little faster, click on this. There's an option down the bottom here, moves it across. Either one, they end up in your Library. You can right click them easily to rename them.

Cool thing about colors is that if I jump into Illustrator or Photoshop-- I jumped into here by accident. But the colors are there because I'm using the same Libraries panel, with the same name, 'Maynooth Furniture', same in Illustrator. They're all there. Other things you can add are things like Paragraph Styles. I've got a Paragraph Style applied to this location, it's called 'Heading'. I click on this button here, or with it selected I can say, you my friend, I want just the Paragraph Style. Cool thing about Paragraph Styles is that if I open up a new document in InDesign, these are here. I can draw stuff, and I can add text. I can select it, and I can say 'Heading'. Not only does it apply it to the text, but adds it to my Paragraph Styles. Same is true for Illustrator.

In Illustrator, I can use that Paragraph Style, see it came through. So, added some text, click on the Paragraph Style, and life is easy. For some reason Paragraph Styles don't work in Photoshop yet, or at least I can't make them work but that's okay, the colors work. Let's get back into InDesign. You can do the same things with Character Styles. We're not going to, because it's the exact same process. Let's go back to this 'Maynooth Locations'. Now we can add actual graphics. I'm going to click on these three, and let's say I use this quite a bit. Just drag it into here. You can click the button, or just drag it. You can see, here's a little graphic, so I open up my 'New Document'. The graphic comes along. I use this mainly for things like-- I draw arrows all the time for lot of my tutorials. I have a Styles in here called 'Notes'. Where is he, I might as well show you. And he has a lot of arrows and circles, and stuff, and 'Before' and 'After'. I write that lots. That's in here as a graphic, that means I can drag it out and use 'Before' and 'After', and it's the right size and the right font.

Same with the circles, I use it to highlight stuff. I put circles around things, so I know which one I'm pointing. Awesome! Let's go back to 'Maynooth Furniture'. Now let's say I have added something through Illustrator. So in here, I'm going to draw-- I'm not sure what I'm going to draw. I'm going to draw something beautiful, look how beautiful this is. The line, good work, Dan, I'm going to grab the 'Width tool'. It's my favorite tool in Illustrator. So we draw this super amazing line. Say it's a logo or a graphic, I'm going to add this to my Library here. And of course, it goes two ways because my graphic now is here in InDesign. Now let's say I drag this out, and I start using it. So one of the pros, and also its exact same con is that if I go and update this file, this will update as well. So I can double click it, that edits it in Illustrator. You'll notice, it's not that original file I was working with, it's a separate file. Once it's in the Library, it's just kind of its own new unique thing.

In here, I'm going to say-- actually I'm going to grab my 'Width tool' again, and I'm going to add another little thing to it. I'm not sure what I'm doing. But if I save it, go back in to InDesign, you'll notice that this thing has adjusted. It can be cool, but sometimes you're like "I just don't want them all connected." Easy trick to get around that, if I go back into here, and undo, save it, I kind of wrecked it. So it updates. So instead of dragging it off normally - that's fine - what I can do is, while I'm dragging it out, hold down the 'Option' key. That is, on a Mac, and on a PC, it's the 'Alt' key. When I drag it out this way what will happen is, you'll notice, the little cloud icon's gone but when I update this one, let's say I pick a new color I save it, and I go back into InDesign, the graphic updated, but this guy didn't. So whenever you drag things out holding down 'Option' on a Mac or 'Alt' key on a PC, it will come through, but they'd be disconnected, pretty much I always do that. I just find it's just easier working with everything all kind of dragged out, I love that it's there but I don't like it connected.

Another thing is, in here, say in our 'Locations', let's say I want to add-- if I click on this 'Text', and I click on 'Add', I can add it as a graphic I'll turn all of this off, just as a graphic, and it's just the unit that I can drag out and use again. Remember, if I hold the 'Alt' key, it won't connect them up. But that's actually like a text block. You can now, in the newer version of InDesign you can click on this, and just add the actual text itself not the text box. Why that's different is that its-- watch this, if I drag it out, it's no longer a text box I can decide on what to do with it out here. It's not that physical shape, I can make it any shape I like.

The other nice thing about it is that, if I jump into, say Illustrator, and go back to this document that I'm working with, you can see the text is available here, I can drag it out. So it is text rather than a graphic. I know it seems like a small difference, but it is quite useful. You might put in your 'Tease & Cease', or you're like me, I've got my address, it might be a disclaimer. Something you use over and over again across multiple documents. You'd be able to open this up and see the text in After Effects, in Premiere Adobe Animate, Muse, can't thing of anything else, but yes, nice and useful.

Now the next thing we're going to do is, back in InDesign, your Libraries here, we can share. There's two options. At the top here, in the Flyout menu, for your CC Libraries there's 'Collaborate' and 'Share Link'. Collaborate's been around a little while. All it does, means it says I'm going to share this library with somebody else in my team. It opens up a website, and allows me to invite contributors. So I can put in somebody's-- you need to really put in their Adobe email address, for their Adobe ID. This is for colleagues, other people you work with. You might be working in a bigger agency, or a marketing department, or something, you want to share them around because you want to both add colors, and logos, and fonts, and texts and share the resources. So I can put in my email address. I can decide whether I trust them to be able to edit as well. Maybe it is for people-- you're a Head Honcho, and you just want to make sure-- they can use it, but you don't want them adding or removing from it. So you can just say, they can view.

Back into InDesign, a new little thing that they stuck in was this option here, which just says 'Share Link'. What's really nice about this, it opens up another website which you can turn on from 'Private' to 'Public', and this thing here can just be emailed to people. And why this is nice? You can add a bit of a description, but this is for sharing with, say your clients or people that don't have other Adobe products, or they don't have an Adobe ID because Collaborate allows them to kind of get it in there, and get it in the software. This just opens up a web version. So I'm going to open up in a new browser. Let's have a look at what it looks like.

So I email this to my client, and say "Here, here's the colors, here's some images." The nice thing about it is that they can actually use this stuff. You might use this as maybe a corporate spec, say you do some logos with somebody, you can share your library with them. And what they have, they have read only access, and they can go through and you might have a bunch of different libraries in here, and they can click on it and view it. They can right click it, and save the image. So it gives you kind of a real, kind of updatable corporate manual, or it might be out to a developer so that they know what colors to be using, and here's some of the graphics, put them into a CC Library, share them around. And they don't need Adobe IDs, and all sorts of Adobe skills. So that's really useful.

What I find really useful is-- back into InDesign, I've got some-- you can tell the ones that are being collaborated. You can see this one here, Adobe logos has got little two heads there. That means I'm collaborating with somebody else. What I find useful, sometimes I come in here, and I'm like, "I'm sure I put that logo in there, where did it go?" And the person I've been collaborating with might have deleted it. They might have a good reason, or they might have done it by mistake. What you can do is you can go up to here, in the 'Burger menu', and you can go to the one that says, you click on here, it says, "View Deleted Items", it opens up that website again, and it just shows you the things that have been deleted from it. You can re-engage them, which is really cool. This ends up in Archive. You can click on it, and say "Actually put that back in, please, we're still there," or you can delete it permanently if you like. If you're trying to get rid of evidence of-- I don't know what you'd be giving, whatever evidence in here from-- but you can permanently delete it.

So that is going to be it for doing super advanced CC Libraries. I bet you, the most useful one is the dragging it out, holding down 'Alt' or 'Option' to break that link. Totally makes Libraries a lot more usable when they're all not connected. It does for me at least. All right, let's get on to the next video.

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