As many of you know, resources and tools are some of your greatest assets when you are designing a new work or personal project. They can be a real lifesaver in so many ways, especially when you are under a time crunch. As a designer at Webspec Design, I don’t always get the luxury of spending as much time on a project as I would like. So finding tools and resources I can use is always a treat for me, especially when I find one that will save me a ton of time and makes my workflow faster.
If you use Adobe Creative Cloud products, I’m sure you know about the latest update that Adobe released a few months ago. And if you are anything like me, you were probably overly excited about the new features they added. Recently I decided to dive in more to learn about the new tools they provided us, specifically a new addition called Adobe Libraries.
Over the past three weeks I have been learning more about how these Libraries work and thought I would share with you what I have learned and how they help improve my workflow.
So What are Adobe Libraries?
Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries is an extension added to Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and mobile apps to allow their users to add color, color themes, graphic elements, text styles, images, shapes and much more to a Library that is tailored to a specific project you are working on. Each library you create organizes your assets by color themes, shapes and fonts for easy finding.
Edit Your Assets Once
The ability to universally change assets by editing one was by far the most exciting feature for me to learn about. Before, I was selecting and dragging my assets from one project file to another. This would get to be very cumbersome when I had a lot of assets that were being reused over and over from one file to another. But with Libraries, that issue disappeared.
At first I didn’t realize you could edit assets once you placed them into the Library. A few days later, I found out that I could drop my navigation bar that I made for a client’s project in the Library and if I edited it in one place, the changes would be made universally across multiple files. To say I was overly ecstatic about it would be an understatement! Let me give you an example: say your client wants to change the wording on a button you’ve created. You’ve already used it on multiple files, and that same change now has to be made in multiple locations. In the past, I would’ve had to open up every file I used and correct each one. This was not very efficient (or fun, I may add). But now with Libraries, all I have to do is make the fix once and it extends across all files. This is way more convenient, less time consuming and also makes me not hate my life for having to open 10+ files to make a minor change. Cool…right?
Use Your Libraries Across Multiple Projects
I work mainly in Photoshop, so that’s where I tend to create my Libraries. What I found out was that other Adobe products use Libraries too. What’s neat about this is you can use the same Libraries across multiple programs. So, if I create a Library in Photoshop, but need to work in Illustrator to create custom icons or illustrations for a client’s website, I can just go to my Library and pick it up right there — no more flipping back and forth between programs and/or files.
Share Your Libraries with Your Team
Here at Webspec we share a lot of our files and documents with one another to get a project finished. This is especially true when it comes to designer and developer work relationships. Designers have to work closely with developers to explain our ideas and concepts when we pass off our designs. Sometimes things can get lost in translation, but in Adobe Libraries you have the option of sharing your specific Library with the team members who will be working on that project. This is helpful for us because developers are able to see the colors and fonts I used, what assets I reused and much more. Using the collaboration sharing tool helps keep the project style consistent across the team and allows for there to be little confusion during the pass off of a project.
Now that you have heard about all the wonderful things Adobe Libraries has done to improve my workflow, give it a try yourself. I promise it will make your life much easier! Even if you don’t have anything to do with Adobe products on a day-to-day basis, I challenge you to go learn something new for yourself that will help your workflow. You never know what you may discover when you set out to learn something different from your everyday norm. Who knows, you might just find out the process you have been following wasn’t working all that great after all. So set out to #learnsomethingnew!
