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• 1 2017-08-13T07:38:19-07:00 2C: The 5 Elements You Need to Know about Every Creative Cloud Workspace (Interface) 11 plain 2017-08-31T05:25:23-07:00 6. ACC interfaces and menus -- settings, preferences, templates, and art boards
  When you first launch a Creative Cloud application, you need to establish preferences and settings before you create a new project. If you’re just beginning, you probably want to rely on the original settings and preferences and not change them, but even so you need to know that they exist and can be revised. For example, in InDesign, you might want to set your “units & increments” for either millimeters, inches, picas, or pixels, depending on your purposes. In Premiere Pro, I like to set the default on the still images I import to 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds.
  
  Creative Cloud becomes increasingly user-friendly with each update, and one of the things it now does better than ever is to provide templates that anticipate the most common formats beginners want to use. It also makes it easy to switch between them. These templates handle a number of settings and preferences so you don’t have to worry about them, although you can almost always override such presets when you need to.
  
  In Photoshop and XD, these templates are called “artboards,” and there are preset artboards to choose from when you start a new design project for web, mobile, or tablet. In many cases, you can save your work in different formats with different settings. For example, In Premiere Pro, you can save your sequences in standard definition for quick streaming or you can export in high definition (HD) or ultra-high definition (4k).
  
  Chapter One asks you “What do you want to create today?”  because you should always ask that question as you begin any new project in Creative Cloud. What genre or format will you use to publish and circulate your final work? You need to have some understanding of the final destination in order to start a project in Creative Cloud with the right settings, preferences, templates, and artboards.
  
  7. ACC interfaces and menus -- workspace, saving, sharing
  Workspaces are very personal. Just look at someone’s desk at work, at home, in an office, at a studio, or in a cubicle. We each have individualized ways of working. Some people like to have photographs of their family nearby. Others have artwork or cartoons. So it is with the workspaces or interfaces within each Creative Cloud application: They are individualized.
  
  Each workspace, in each different application, begins with a standard arrangement, but these can be customized depending on the tools you use most. Each interface does have some things that don’t change very much such as tools (#8 below) and menus (#9). Tools such as the selection arrow or cropping tool are typically in a vertical stack against the left edge of the screen, and the main-menu functions are horizontal across the top of the screen.
  
  The space in the middle, in between the menus on the edges of the screen, is like a tabletop, canvas, or pottery wheel — it’s where you pull things together, work on them, and create. This central pane is where you actually get the work done, but the entire interface, including all of the menus and tools, is called the “workspace.”
  
  All of the Creative Cloud workspaces and interfaces have a similar look and function so that once you learn one application, it’s much easier to use the others. Creative Cloud workspaces have consistent functions, names, and tendencies — the main tools are on the left, the main functions are in a pull-down menu from the top, and you’re able to customize the organization.
  
  On the other hand, each media format is so unique that the workspaces will have some important differences. In some ways a film is like a photograph, but in others it’s very different, which is why Photoshop has a different interface than Premiere Pro.
  
  There are many aspects to these workspaces, but two of the most essential are saving and sharing your work. Many of the applications have automatic Save features, but it’s still a good idea to save your progress regularly. I use the keyboard shortcut commands (Command-S) probably about once every minute or two. Sharing your work is essential as well. Most Creative Cloud applications have a Share button or menu at the top of the screen. You should figure out how to share and export your work in your first days working with any application. 
  
  8. Understanding the Main Tools
  Every Creative Cloud application workspace or interface has a column of main tools, represented by icons, typically in a vertical stack toward the left edge of the screen. Think of this column as your toolbox for each application. You grab a hammer to drive a nail. Then you use a paintbrush to paint. Next you might drill a hole using a different tool.
  
  These toolboxes can look intimidating at first. Photoshop and Illustrator have over a dozen tools in the standard toolbox, and many of the tool icons can be clicked to reveal different varieties of the tool. But don’t be intimidated, because novices and professionals alike tend only use a couple of these tools at a time — never the entire toolbox at once. You can basically use two-to-four tools in each application to get about 90% of your work done, at least at first.
  
  Further, the tool icons are self-explanatory: The arrow selects things, the straight line draws lines, the paint brush paints strokes, the letter “T” is the text tool for typing, etc.
  
  Like all software, Creative Cloud applications have pull-down menus for the most common functions across the top of the screen. When you’re new to an application, you’ll go back and forth between the toolbox on the left of the screen and the function menu across the top. Those make up your “home” — the safe and reliable places to go.
  
  The best way, of course, to really understand how the workspaces, menus, and tools work is to actually put your hands on the applications and play around with them. The explanations here can help orient you in general, and the tutorials can show these principles in action, but you really need to try them out on your own to get the picture.
  
  9. Understanding panes, panels, and properties.
  Element 7 above talked about the Creative Cloud general workspaces, and Element 8 described the toolboxes and menus. You’ll also encounter a number of panes, panels, and properties throughout these applications.
  
  A pane is rectangle in the workspace that holds a variety of other tools and panels. For example, the main toolbox is a panel that holds a collection of tools. A panel is a smaller pane or a sub-pane that typically has a list of things or options. Property settings are in very small panels. Properties give more detailed information within a panel, often a numeric value for something.
  Creative Cloud workspaces, panes, panels, and properties are nested, which means that one is located inside the other.
  
  Not all panes, panels, and properties are always visible. To make them appear or disappear, you typically click the Window pull-down menu at the top of the application screen and then select the pane, panel, or property you wish to see. Sometimes there are arrows to either expand a panel or to shrink it. And sometimes properties include numbers, sliders, or selection devices to reveal or change those values.
  
  Until you watch a tutorial and experiment with panes, panels, and properties, it’s difficult to get a sense of what they are and how they work. But you do need to be aware that, like all aspects of Creative Cloud, workspace/interfaces, panes, panels, and properties can be customized in terms of the ways they appear in your own workspace. You might conceal certain panels and reveal others. You can often shrink or expand the sides of a pane to make your workspace more manageable and visible. You can close panels and make them disappear and open new panels through the Window pull down-menu.
  
  10. Getting help and solving problems.
  Chapter One describes the goal of becoming a knowledge producer rather than a media consumer. And in order to become a media producer, you’ll need to learn how to solve technical problems on your own and with the help of others.
  
  If you have a problem with your hardware or operating system, you’ll want to contact a computer consultant. (By the way, 90% of those problems can be solved by saving your work regularly and rebooting your computer when you hit a dead end.)
  
  When the problem involves not knowing how to operate the software, I suggest the following steps to solve it:
  1. Spend at least five minutes trying out different solutions on your own, because doing so develops your instincts and abilities for tackling future problems.
  2. Use the Help feature in the Creative Cloud menu itself. This is particularly helpful for locating functions or commands that you know exist.
  3. Go online and search for advice regarding the problem. Type in the name of the application as well as “how to,” and then describe what you’re looking for in as few words as possible.
  4. Search YouTube for advice on the problem, in case there’s a tutorial.
  5. Educational services like Lynda.com have detailed tutorials covering specific functions in all Creative Cloud applications, but you might not have access to those resources.
  6. If you can’t solve the problem on your own using steps 1-5, it’s time to consult your local Creative Cloud expert. This could be a friend, a media lab attendant, a librarian, or perhaps your instructor.
  7. If you still can’t solve the problem, return to the concept of Principle 2 (in Section 2b): Since there are “many paths to god,” try going at the issue from a very different approach, using a different app or different functions to accomplish approximately the same thing.
   
   
• 1 2017-08-13T07:37:00-07:00 2B: The 5 Principles You Need to Know about Using Creative Cloud 8 2B: The 5 Principles You Need to Know about Using Creative Cloud plain 2017-08-31T05:00:04-07:00
  1. Work at “the speed of thought” with Creative Cloud
  Adobe Creative Cloud applications are increasingly intuitive and easy-to-use for beginners. For example, Adobe XD CC, is a next-generation application that was built so you can “design at the speed of thought.”  Early generation Adobe software had a reputation for being overwhelming — the application interfaces, workspaces, and menus can at first seem extremely complicated, like the controls in the cockpit of an airplane. But four things continue to improve to make Creative Cloud increasingly user-friendly:
  1. The interfaces, menus, and workspaces are more clean and simple.
  2. The tools and functions are more intuitive.
  3. The applications start up in ways that make it easy for beginners to get going.
  4. The programs are better engineered to be faster and more reliable.
  Each generation of Creative Cloud becomes easier for novices to learn, without comprising the growing power that lies under the hood. So have confidence that, with a little bit of patience and guidance, it’s easier than ever to learn to ride the bike of Creative Cloud, because the applications have been developed, refined, and improved over decades of experience and innovation. Creative Cloud is now accessible to mainstream users, not just creative professionals and advanced techies.
  2. There are “many paths to god” using Creative Cloud
  In every Creative Cloud application, there are many different ways to accomplish the same task, and often there are different applications that can accomplish similar tasks. So, when you learn how to do something, either through advice or by figuring it out yourself, don’t be surprised when you later discover a different way to accomplish the same task. For example, imagine that you had a video clip that was 30 seconds long, and you wanted to trim off the first three seconds and the final two seconds. To do this in Premiere Pro, you could use the razor tool, set in-points and out-points, or drag the beginning or end of the clip. There is no single “right” way to do anything — what’s most important is that the approach makes sense to you and works for you.
  
  Not only are there different ways to use different tools within each application, but also you have choices among applications that can accomplish the same tasks. You can edit video within Photoshop, if that works for you, although Premiere Pro was clearly designed to do this better. Likewise, I’ve used Premiere Pro to edit and generate some still images, just because I was more familiar with the functions there which helped me get my work done “at the speed of thought."
  
  This resource is created for students and teachers, and so all its advice is based on the easiest and most reliable ways to accomplish basic tasks, but you can and will eventually discover your own approaches. For example, the video tutorials use pull-down menu commands as often as practical because they’re the easiest to find, but some users might prefer to memorize and use keyboard-command shortcuts instead.
  3. Creative Cloud works collaboratively, with anyone, on any device
  When most of us first learn to ride a bike, drive a car, or ride a horse, we have tunnel vision — we’re only able to focus on ourselves and what’s in front of us. When you first use Creative Cloud applications, you usually work alone — especially in college courses where you receive individual grades. But the way that businesses, communities, organizations, and institutions work in our increasingly networked world is through collaboration. Very quickly, especially in the professional world, you’ll find yourself working collaboratively, with a variety of people in a variety of places.
  
  Thus, an extremely powerful and important dimension of Creative Cloud is its collaborative, cloud-based platform. Your can easily store work and share it with your team on whatever devices they use, wherever they use them. And when it comes time to “go live,” your work can be easily published or broadcast, especially across social media, because it was developed in the cloud all along.
  
  It’s always stunning to see the magic of Photoshop or Premiere Pro, for example when you completely swap the backdrop of your selfie from the ugly wall of your basement office to the majesty of a gorgeous landscape. We’ve known for a long time that Creative Cloud applications have those awesome powers. But what you’ll find just as magical and powerful are the collaborative and distributed powers of Creative Cloud. When you first start out, it’s difficult to appreciate how important the cloud and all of its synching and library features can be. But once Creative Cloud makes it easy for you and your team to work on a project simultaneously — even from your mobile devices — you’ll begin to appreciate the real power of Creative Cloud.
  4. The Creative Cloud desktop dashboard manages your applications and account
  Computers that run Windows or Mac operating systems have a special Creative Cloud pop-up menu that looks like a black infinity symbol, located in the very top bar of the screen. If you use a smartphone, you probably don’t even think about the dashboard of applications that just pop up whenever you open up that device. And, if you use a computer, you also have a menu of applications that pop up on your screen.
  
  Creative Cloud has an awesome pop-up menu that makes locating, installing, and running all of your applications efficient and well-organized. If you click that infinity icon, a self-explanatory list of applications pops up (or pops down), which tells you which apps you have installed, which apps you could install, and which apps have updates available. Get used to clicking that icon to manage your Creative Cloud apps. One important note: It’s a good idea to only download the applications you need one at a time, as you need them. Very few of us need all of the Creative Cloud applications downloaded and installed on our computers. Just use the ones you need, even though they’re all part of your Creative Cloud subscription.
  
  As a Creative Cloud subscriber, you also have a web-based dashboard of account settings. You need your online account settings to access some Creative Cloud features such as Behance and Adobe Portfolio, but, most importantly, the dashboard helps you manage your assets and libraries that are synced through the cloud.
  5. Creative Cloud is one sweet suite
  The word “synergy” often means a collection of things that work so well together that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So it is with the Creative Cloud suite of applications. You might find a different video editor that initially seems to work as well for your purposes as Premiere Pro. Or maybe you have a website editor that you like, so you haven’t tried Adobe Muse or Dreamweaver. But at some point — and probably sooner than later — you’ll need and want your individual applications to work together, to work in concert, to have synergy.
  
  There is no suite of creative applications that are as professional, comprehensive, complementary, and powerful as Creative Cloud — and that’s not a debatable claim, because there is no other collection like it, period.
  
  So, one of the incredible advantages and most powerful features of Creative Cloud is that its applications work together so seamlessly. They’re a matching set. If you’re putting together a magazine layout in InDesign CC and you need to adjust some aspect of a photograph, you don’t need to jump outside InDesign, launch Photoshop, work in Photoshop, then re-import the photograph back into InDesign. These kinds of operations can happen in an instant, “at the speed of thought,” because the applications have such synergy.