Unlocking Adobe Express Files: Organizing for Efficiency and Creative Freedom
Do you find yourself lost in a digital maze, desperately searching for that crucial Adobe Express file you need? We’ve all been there. In this article, we’ll shed light on Adobe Express Files and Libraries, making your creative process smoother than ever.
The File vs. Library Dilemma: A Real-Life Scenario
Imagine you work at Homes on the Road, a bustling marketing agency. You produce a dozen newsletters every week, countless posters, and a plethora of graphics aligned with your company’s marketing calendar. Your company places a premium on image consistency, often requiring you to reuse brand graphics and images in your projects. Sometimes, your fellow designers create assets in Illustrator or Photoshop for you to incorporate. These assets are stored in the company’s library.
Every month, you distribute 100 PDFs for printing and 500 JPEGs and PNGs for online posting – a total of 600 final products. You typically find these finished projects in your brand’s file folder. Now, the inevitable happens:
Houston. We have a Problem:
You urgently need last year’s Autumn Sale ad for a Winter promotion, with minor tweaks to the graphic and title. The layout and font are perfect, and your Director insists on using it. However, when you open the file, you’re unable to make any changes. You check your library, but the Autumn Sale is nowhere to be found. Panic sets in as you struggle to locate it for your new project. What’s happening?
{End of Scenario}
Problem Solved: The “Missing Link”
Adobe veterans are accustomed to working with layers and flattening in Classic Photoshop. Layers allow you to adjust individual elements separately, and when your design is perfect, you flatten it, essentially creating an unalterable snapshot.
Before Creative Cloud, we relied on an add-on called “Bridge” to save our work in a special place accessible across Adobe applications like InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
Understanding Adobe Express “Auto-Steps
Adobe Express, like its older siblings, incorporates layers. It automatically creates a new layer each time you add an image, text, or asset. If you want to keep elements together, you “Group” them, a concept familiar to Photoshop users. However, here’s the crucial part: when you finish designing and hit “Download,” Adobe Express effectively “flattens” your work, rendering it as a scalable but non-editable screenshot.
Taking a Pre-Step Before Adobe Express “Auto-Steps”
If you aim to reuse your designs and maintain the ability to make future edits, you must first create a “Template.” After creating a template, Adobe Express prompts you to choose which “Library” or “Brand” to save it in.
Now, you can download your work as an image or PDF – these are the “flattened” files, scalable but not editable.
Converting Existing Files to Templates
If you have a treasure trove of outstanding work that you never saved as templates, worry not; the new Adobe Express simplifies this process. You can even transform work from your File Folders into templates after downloading. Follow these steps:
1. Open Adobe Express (AE).
2. Navigate to “Your Stuff” or “My Stuff.”
3. Locate the file you want to save as a template.
4. Open the file, and if needed, convert it to the new Adobe Express format.
5. Click the submenu (the three dots) and select “Download.”
6. Opt to “Make a Template.”
7. Rename your template and choose the “Library” where you want to save it.
Now, whenever you create a new design, you can access the file from your Library, make necessary changes, save it as a new template if desired, and download it for immediate use.
Our next Topic will cover using those Templates!
Go try it out and let me know how it works for you.
