Adobe InDesign CC - Essential Training

Why should I use CC Libraries in InDesign?

Daniel Walter Scott

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In this video we're going to look at 'CC Libraries'. I love them, you've been probably avoiding them for a long time. They're amazing, let's get to use them because we're going to add things like this, logos, images, and colors. That's going to mean we can use them in other InDesign documents, but also, look, they appear the same in Photoshop, in Illustrator, in After Effects and all the other lovely Adobe products. Let's go and learn how to use them.

First thing we need to do is, make sure you can see your 'CC Libraries'. It's under 'Window', 'CC Libraries'. Let's make a new library. I'm going to keep this one that I've got, but if you've skipped the earlier tutorial we did, when we made our colors, you'll have to go to this little drop down. It's probably going to say 'My Library', that's the one you get by default. Down the bottom here, it says 'Create New Library'. Create it, give it a name. I've called mine 'Green at Heart' for this client that I'm working for. Now let's say—

We've added these colors earlier, but let's say you've skipped that. Let's say that-- maybe this is just a new color that's appeared. So what you do is-- I've drawn a rectangle and it's filled with some random color that I now want to include as part of my swatches. The way to do it, is have it selected with the 'black arrow'. And what we can do, see this little + sign down the bottom here? I'm in 'Green at Heart' library, I want to add something to it. And you can see, it's 'Graphic' and ''Fill Color'. 'Graphic' is actually going to add the square itself. I don't need that square, I just need the 'Fill' color. So click 'Add' for just that 'Fill' color. If I have them both selected, if I add the 'Graphic' as well I get a rectangle. That's cool, means that later on I can draw out the exact same rectangle and use it over and over again, that might be useful for you. I don't want him, so I can click on him, hit the little trash can, bye bye. We got two of these colors now, goodbye. It's got an ugly color that I don't want, goodbye.

So, that's how to add colors, other things you can add, probably the most useful is images. There's this image here, and I'm going to add it so that I can use it in lots of other documents. This library stays there, doesn't matter what document you have open. If I go to a new document, 'File', 'New', 'New Document'. Click 'Create', you can see, these are still here, allowing me to quickly grab our colors and stuff. Let's go back to this one.

Now adding images can be interesting. If it's just the image by itself, you can just click, hold, and drag it in. You can see, I've dragged it because I've already cropped it. You can see it's dragged the cropped version of it. The image is actually quite big. So what you can do is, double click the image. You can kind of start to see, it's spread out to this red edge here. That means I've got the whole image selected, and down here-- now can I drag it? I can. So I've just dragged it by double clicking it and you can see, that's the entire image, so I'm going to download this guy. This is my 'Food' image. So you can add images that way.

Other things you might add, say this logo here, I can select it, and because it's not cropped, I can just drag the whole thing in there. That's my 'Logo Green'. You can add blocks of 'Type', like this one here, say this little round thing I've made, I want to use it over and over again. It's something like our 'Call to Action', or our unique selling point. I'm going to click, hold, and drag it. You can see, the whole unit comes with me. So if I go to this next document and I go-- I want to quickly build a thing. I can drag out-- an A4 page, I can go up the top here. I can click on 'filling with the green'. Actually, dark green, drag the logo out. I can add my image and this little round thing. You can see how quickly I can start building extra documents because you've got everything in this library. Gets even better.

if you jump out to another Adobe product, so I jump into say, Photoshop I'm working on this, and say I need that color, or you can see this is another library that I'm working on, but if I switch to this one here 'Green at Heart', you can see, he's in this one as well. I can use them across all these documents. Here you go, I'm not sure why this drawing that I've done needs round-alls and stuff, but you get the point, right? You can go between any Adobe product. I use this a lot between my video work in After Effects and Premiere, or my graphic design work at Photoshop, or Illustrator, they all use the same libraries.

One last thing to consider is that, say you are a freelancer, or you're beginning a freelancing role, it means that when you sign into another computer, and you use your Adobe ID, these libraries will pre-populate. So if I go into an office, and they say "Dan, I want you do some work with us, and you can use our machine." So I jump on their machine and even if they don't have the license for it, I can download a trial and log in with my user name and ID, you can have it installed on more than one computer. When it opens up, the trial version becomes a full version because I'm a paying customer, and all my libraries pre-populate with the stuff that I use. That can be really handy when you're switching machines, it all syncs up and it also does cool things with some of the Adobe apps. Go check the App Store, there are some cool things that libraries work with them too.

So libraries are awesome. You've probably seen them in lots of Adobe products, and ignored them. Start using them because they are wicked, wicked is not the word. I take that back, they are awesome, or great. Terrible ending over, next video please.