Skip to main content

Create a streamlined workflow In Creative Cloud

Lesson 4 from: Basics of Adobe CC: Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign

Jason Hoppe

Create a streamlined workflow In Creative Cloud

Lesson 4 from: Basics of Adobe CC: Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign

Jason Hoppe

most popular art & design

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

Lesson Info

4. Create a streamlined workflow In Creative Cloud

Lesson Info

Create a streamlined workflow In Creative Cloud

Now that we've gone through the infographics and you've kind of seen how this goes together, people want to know the workflow process on just actually bringing this together. So, what I've done is, I've brought in a couple InDesign files here that I've created. So, I've done a poster and then I've also done a six panel brochure here with all the content, so you can actually see how this comes together. So, how do we actually begin the process to know what it is that we're going to do, and where do we actually start and say, okay, here's what I want to create, how do I gather my assets together? Well, this is in InDesign here which means this is the final step. This is where my image is that I have right here, that I have added it in Photoshop come in. And this is where I bring in my graphics that I have created, or my logos, or my type treatment, that I have created in Illustrator, gets placed in there as well. And then I bring in my text document, and I flow the copy in to this. I sty...

le the text, I add color to that. I add some of my basic shapes and colors for my outlines here, and basically put everything together. But if I were doing this, I would start off with some sketches on what it is that I would like to have it look like. And then I would start with either editing my images or creating my logos or my type treatments, and I'd be doing the logo or type treatment in Illustrator. I would be doing my photos in Photoshop. So, just a quick overview here because we're actually gonna go into each and every segment of this video and we're gonna show you the basics of each one. But if I am starting off with my bakery logo, I had gone in and I had created my bakery logo just using some basic shapes, adding some color here, and we'll give you a quick overview here, don't want to give away too much. But I would go in and start using some of my basic shapes. Now with Illustrator, we can draw just about anything you can possibly imagine. We have our whole set of shapes which can be manipulated into absolutely anything. We also have our set of lines, and spirals, and arcs, and grids. And we also have our pen tool to draw just about any type of freeform shape you can possibly imagine. And then we have other great stuff, our pencil tool, our shaper tool on how you can work with stuff, and this is all about going in and creating items, and putting text in. So, I would start with my logo and I would begin some of the basic content here. Gonna move this up. And just going in and creating some basic shapes. Being able to draw a shape, being able to apply a color to that shape, and that border. Now, of course, I would've already fully sketched out my design in 30 or 40 sketches, you know. Mentally, of course. (laughs) And then, I'd be able to go in here, and I would be able to choose a color that I could fill my object with and work with this object. Pick a color. I'd be able to put a stroke around that object as well. Pick a color for my color panel, right there. And be able to work with this. Do any type of logo or shape. I could also introduce another shape in here. Create a nice little rectangle over my logo. Be able to apply a stroke or a fill to that as well. Pick another color like that to go over the top. I could take some text, can use my type tool. Could create some text in Illustrator. Use all of the type editing tools that we have. Be able to select from a whole list of fonts, and be able to edit my text. From our built-in type menu, I can see what I'm getting here. Choose from a whole bunch of items. Be able to put that text in here. Looks like the London Underground, doesn't it? Mm-hmm, very much so. That was not by influence. Anything that I do with text, I can also add color to that as well. I can go in and create some, and use some really cool Illustrator effects here, that have got all these things that you can do with any type of Illustrator content. Lot of fun stuff. If you ever want to start with the fun stuff in Illustrator, you can take and you can warp any shape, any object. In this case, I'm gonna take and I'm gonna arc this whole object right here. Be able to move that around. Do fun stuff like that. I have the ability to edit any type of shape that I want to. We can create rounded shapes, circles, polygon, stars and create any type of shape, fill. You name it, we can do it. But I would go in and create my graphic. And once my graphic was done, I would be able to then save this graphic, and bring this content into InDesign. Place it, scale it however I want. So if I was going over to Photoshop here, I could take any one of my images in Photoshop. I can open it up. Plug my camera in, or my cellphone. Download the photos and open it up in Photoshop. Any type of image, a TIFF, a JPEG, a GIF file, a PNG, Photoshop file. Photoshop will edit virtually any image you possible can get out there. If you can get an image on your machine, you can open it up in Photoshop. And in Photoshop, it's pretty much limitless to what I can do here. I could go in and I could change the colors of this. I could put a drop shadow on this. I could take out the background. I could put multiple donuts in here. And some of the fun stuff, going through, if you've never used Photoshop, the easiest way to get over your fear of Photoshop is just go under the Fun menu. And that's the Filter menu. And the Filter menu, you can go in here and you can just have fun. If you're scared of Photoshop, you know, great way to get over your fear of Photoshop. Filter, totally fun. In fact, just go on to the Filter menu and use the Filter Gallery, okay? And just sit there for half an hour and have a little bit of fun. The Filter Gallery allows you to go in and take your object, and with your object, Filter, Filter Gallery, can go in, and I can apply a whole bunch of really cool stuff with my image here. Let me make sure everything is set up correctly. Got that, okay. Filter, Gallery. Doesn't want to be working correctly today. We're just gonna apply the filters here. Little bit of fun stuff. You know, crazy filters. Apply interesting things to that. I think I know, no, no, it doesn't want to do it. Okay so, go in there and have a little bit of fun. For some reason, the Filter Gallery is not working like it should today. I can also take and I can color correct my images. We have all sorts of color adjustments here in Photoshop. Brightness, contrast, levels, curves; you name it, you can do it. One of my favorite ones, it's another great icebreaker, going into Hue And Saturation. And going in and changing the color of your object. Always fun, you know, you have no idea what it does but, boy, it sure looks cool. Going in and being able to change the color of anything. Those shirts that I showed you? That's how we changed the color of the shirts. So, you can go in and create all sorts of fun colors in there. Totally shift the colors of your image. Going through, doing that. This is also where you can go in, and you can desaturate your image too if you want to create kind of a soft-colored image or really saturate your image. Any type of color correction that you want to. If you want to get more into Photoshop, you can then go in and you can choose to use your selection tools, and be able to take your objects, and do fun stuff like put drop shadows underneath your object as well. So you can cast a little drop shadow under there. I know, drop shadows can be a little bit cheesy, but if you want to do that, you can create drop shadows on there. Bring those right into your objects. No, this is not perfect, folks. This is just an overview to show you some of the basic things that we can do. I understand, okay. You can get into far more advanced items. Multiple layers, being able to bring things in. Composite things as well, front to back. This is very advanced, but just wanna show you. You know, if you're gonna get over your fear of Photoshop, show you all the great things that you can do. Any type of image, open it up in Photoshop. You can have a lot of fun with this. You can even go in and do more fun stuff with your filter tools here. You know, you wanna go ahead and create really weird stuff as well, Photoshop can do all sorts of wild, crazy, fun things. If you wanna do just basic editing, sure, Photoshop does basic editing. But, you want to manipulate your photo, that's what you're going to do. You can also go and you can crop your images as well. If you have a larger image, go in with the crop tool, and you can crop that however you'd like. So you can get different portions of that if you want to. You can also go in and convert it to gray scale. Work with all the other cool Photoshop effects that we have. When we're done, we have the ability to save this Photoshop file as just about any type of image file you can possibly imagine, for any purpose. If I want to save this for the web, if I want to save this for print, whatever it may be, I can save this and I can also print it directly from here. Once I've gone through and I've edited my files, then that's where I would jump over to InDesign and I would be able to place all my content in here, so that I could then create my files. Its very simple. We can create a new document here. And all of our content that was created in Illustrator, our content that was created in Photoshop, and then any type of text document can be all brought in right here. And I would go, and I would bring my files in. So, here I am in InDesign, and I'm gonna bring all my content in. And I've got my content that was done in Illustrator. So there's my bakery logo that I have and I can bring that into InDesign. My Photoshop files, I can also bring those into InDesign as well. I don't do any editing of this content in InDesign. It's all going to be placed, and then sized, and put into position. So I can go in, and I can grab some of my images that I've done in Photoshop, and then be able to place those images in here as well. And if I want to bring in any type of copy, I can either create a text container in InDesign and I can just type content right in there. Or if I've already got a text file or I copy from a website, or I copy from an email, I can copy from there, go right over into InDesign and paste that copy right in. I do have a document that has text in there. So I can bring that in as well. I can go into the File menu and choose Place. And with that, I can go into my document, under my InDesign. And I've got my document, and be able to bring this in, and place all of my content, so that I can work with that. Be able to size all of my content, choose the fonts in here, and work with it, however I'd like. Yes, Kenna. Yeah, there was a question from Laurie and Davie that was regarding this actually. Do you create the type for InDesign in Word or Pages? So in terms of that, the whole workload of putting things together, where do you create that type? So, that's a really good question because InDesign does not have a filter to import a Pages document, so if you do it in Pages and you try to go under the File menu and choose Place, it doesn't recognize that file. You can always open the Pages document, copy the content, and then place it into InDesign which is a little bit of a work-around, but normally a Word document is what you'd end up using. I don't use Word. I usually have copywriters that do that for me. But the answer is yes, you can do it in Word. So, we've brought in our images that we have edited in Photoshop. We have brought in our graphics, our logos, our type treatments that we have done in Illustrator. We've brought in some text from our Word document as well, and now we can go in and do some of the things we do in InDesign. What InDesign does best is being able to format all of our content, very quickly, very easily. Great features in InDesign, getting everything lined up, creating multiple pages, putting on automatic page numbering, and being able to create layouts that are gonna be consistent over multiple pages. Getting things lined up? InDesign is great. InDesign has this great feature that allows us to have smart guides, and smart guides allow us to align everything in an absolute snap. And you can see how that works here, and we will talk more about this, where I can go in and size, and I can also move my content around, and it will automatically align with other content on the page so I don't have to get things slightly off. Everything in InDesign is in a container. So each and every object is its own container which makes it totally simple to move around, place anywhere that we want to, put things in front of, put things behind each other. We don't have to worry about going through and making sure we move stuff around by using columns or hitting the Return key. Nope, everything is its own specific content. If I'd like to have something moved, I can simply take my text container and I can resize my text container and I can grab all my other content, I can move that down. Take my text container, move it up. Snap it to my guides, wherever I want to have that. Put it so that it's right in the middle of my page and be able to align everything else, right in the middle of my page as well. And go about creating my layout. Multiple pages means I can flow in content over multiple pages. I can flow it from one page to the next. I can format everything so we have consistent styles. Headlines, body copy can all be done so that it all looks the same. This is how magazines are done. This is how newspapers are done. Cookbooks, catalogs, everything. Very easy to add multiple pages to an InDesign document. I can create thousands of pages in here, all with a consistent look and feel. I can change my margins, and my columns, my orientation of my page. And virtually any content that I can grab. I can put right into InDesign. And because it's all in its own container, I can very easily take these containers. I can move them. I can scale them. I can rotate them. I can flip them. Whatever we need to do, that simple. But, the one thing I can't do is I can't edit any of these graphics, or edit any of the content in InDesign. It is literally a page layout application. This content is created in the other applications. And this is InDesign, just working with the page layout. Some of the things we can do with InDesign, we can go in and create basic fills where I could take a basic container, and using my swatch panel, I could go in and I could fill with a color. And I can put that in there. That's about the extent of the drawing that I'm going to do in InDesign. Lines, dotted lines, borders, basic fills, just for page layout purposes. I wouldn't create a logo. I wouldn't create anything fancy. If I want to go ahead and do some sort of plant illustration, that's gonna be done in Illustrator. Then it's gonna be placed into InDesign. InDesign's sole purpose is taking content and making sure that you put it wherever that you want it to go.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Color in InDesign
InDesign Basics
InDesign Images and links
Photoshop Basics Shortcuts
Photoshop Color Correction
Photoshop Layers
Photoshop Selections Basics
Photoshop Terminology
Shapes Paths Guides InDesign
Type in InDesign
Illustrator Shortcuts
Shapes & Pathfinder in Illustrator
Photoshop Assets
Illustrator Assets
InDesign Assets
Infographic

Ratings and Reviews

user 1398976626171314
 

Such an important overview that clarifies and simplifies each piece of software and its role in achieving a beautiful and organized end result. Love Jason's brilliant and funny style and I appreciate his going into the "whys" of the software design evolution so it's not just memorizing methods but truly understanding what you can do even with a eye to the future changes. Fascinating, fun and empowering! My first Creative Live purchase!

Corrine Radergraham
 

WOW!! Jason is a very engaging instructor. It's obvious that he knows the programs inside and out. He imparts a tremendous amount of excellent material in a very short time, he makes sense and he is well-spoken with a sense of humor and he doesn't get lost in the materials and have to bungle his way out, very well prepared. I've been using PS and IA for the past several years on and off and currently have 6 on my computer but looking at going to CC in the near future. Even with that experience, he provided tips and tricks for both that were very enlightening in using them more productively. I'm not so familiar with ID and I now feel that I have a working knowledge of all three programs. I've taken Adobe classes taught by other instructors and found them rather boring to drag myself through. Jason is not boring in the least! So if you aren't familiar with these programs or are even curious about them and want an excellent overview, I totally recommend that you take this class. You will definitely not be sorry and will get your money's worth. I took this when it was offered on air free of charge. The only down of taking it free is that there are downloadable materials that are only available by purchase which sound excellent and I would like to have them, but I want to take one of Jason's other classes and can't justify the expense of this class only for the downloads, because I am familiar with the programs and would be unlikely to actually watch the class again, and there is his interactive pdf class that I am really looking forward to......5 stars and all thumbs up for Jason's instruction!

Renee Hamilton
 

Enjoying this class immensely. Havent used illustrator properly for a while but this class is refreshing my memory. Its so awesome and it makes illustrator seem so easy! Wow wow wow! Thank you Jason and Creative live

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES