Advanced Use Of CC Libraries In Adobe InDesign CC

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.