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Adobe CC for Science A Tour of the Adobe Apps

INTRODUCTION

The Adobe Creative Cloud boasts upwards of 50 different apps with a wide range of functionalities, from character animation to web design to photo editing, and just about everything in between. This can be daunting at first blush, but in this Spark page we're going to navigate the CC's "greatest hits" for creating beautiful scientific projects. You'll notice some overlapping features between some of the apps; there are many different ways to obtain the same final product by using one or a combination of tools. You can find which are most intuitive for you and best suit the needs of your project! For each app, check out some tutorials to get a sense of their power in action.

LIGHTROOM

Lightroom is a cloud-based service that enables you to edit, organize, store, and share your photos across your devices.
  • Lightroom is a one-stop-shop for photo editing, organization, layout and sharing.
  • It features a host of adjustment options (saturation, hue, exposure, and highlights, just to name a few) with flexible controls for both fine-tuning and more dramatic edits.
  • It offers useful filter presets to get you started on your editing journey!
  • Adjustments can be applied to localized regions of each photo for finer control.
  • Edits can be applied to just one photo at a time or many at once for standardization and ease of editing.
  • Organizing photos is made easy with the "starring" system — you can assign your photos between 1-5 stars to make note of which you best prefer. (Shortcut Tip: Pressing numbers 1 through 5 on your keyboard will assign a photo that number of stars!)
  • When it comes time to share, you can create albums and even galleries of your favorite photos by visiting lightroom.adobe.com and logging in with your Adobe ID.
  • Taking your photos in raw can give you a lot more flexibility when editing them in Lightroom!

TUTORIALS

  • Here's a quick one-minute descriptive video directly from Adobe (which inspired much of the content in this page!)
  • Here's a fifteen-minute crash course on how to use Lightroom! (Plus, this guy has a great accent)
  • What is Adobe Lightroom?
  • This is a full 30-minute training video that promises to teach you all the tools and panels it has to offer!
  • Should you want to try out the Lightroom Adobe App, here's a video that gets you up to speed!
A glimpse at Lightroom!
Lightroom for You: use this tool to import, organize, adjust color and lighting, and export/share the photos for your project.

PHOTOSHOP

Photoshop truly does it all: from photo editing and compositing to digital painting, animation, and graphic design.
  • As with Lightroom, Photoshop can edit photos to a similar degree. You can crop and retouch photos or enhance colors, contrast, or adjust sharpness and blurriness.
  • Photoshop is also stellar for making digital art. You can emulate classic brushstrokes or aim for a more modern design with brush add-ons that are available on through Adobe.
  • With blending brushes or layers, you can combine different colors to create a painting. You can apply digital paintbrush effects to your image, ranging from oil textures, to charcoal, and ink.
  • Photoshop is also very competent in graphic design, featuring some of the basic tools Illustrator expands upon (making it a great testing grounds for your designs!).
  • Front-end web design: Ps is great for making mock-ups of your website.
  • By sequencing several drawings with the "Timeline" tool, you can make GIFs!
  • You can even use Photoshop for video editing! These will be simpler edits than, say, Premiere or Final Cut Pro, but in Ps, editing videos is the same procedure as editing photos.

TUTORIALS

  • This video explains the differences between Lightroom and Photoshop when it comes to photo editing.
  • This tutorial gets you up-and-running with editing photos in Photoshop in 17 minutes (with a very animated host!).
  • Here's a full 40-minute crash course in Ps if you want to get to know the application beyond its photo editing capabilities.
  • But if that's too long, here's a guide to Photoshop in 5 minutes!
A few examples of photo editing with Photoshop!
Photoshop for You: you can opt to edit your photos in Ps, create beautiful scientific infographics with ease, and create a web platform to display them! The jack of all trades!

ILLUSTRATOR

Illustrator is the industry-standard vector graphics software: use it to create graphics and illustrations like logos, infographics, charts, diagrams, comics, and even fonts.
  • While Photoshop dabbles in graphic design, this is where Illustrator dazzles.
  • At first blush, Illustrator might not seem like the ideal software to work with photos, and while it doesn't necessarily assist with editing, it's great for making your gallery more artistic!
  • Users can import images and trace an object in the photograph to re-color or create a sketch-like appearance of a photograph.
  • Manipulating text and adding effects is easy, making Illustrator the tool of choice for postcards, posters, and more.
  • Illustrator specializes in vector graphics; vector artwork is special because it can be rescaled without sacrificing quality (unlike rasterized images). This makes Illustrator excellent for designing anything from really tiny (web icons) to really big (billboard) designs.
  • Specifically for science, Illustrator can be used for making graphs or modifying existing graphs/charts you've made! Break free of the bondage of Excel or even R, Python, or STATA and make beautiful & informative graphs! Here's just how far Illustrator can take you.

TUTORIALS

Adobe Illustrator project inspiration!
Illustrator for You: while this tool isn't the most helpful for a photography project, you can use it to present your images in a more imaginative way or create stylish graphs!

INDESIGN

Design page layouts for print and digital flyers, magazines, and eBooks.
  • InDesign is the industry standard layout & page design software for both digital and print media.
  • With myriad fonts and Adobe Stock images (or, of course, your own imported photos!) create sleek graphic designs.
  • While images are not usually edited in InDesign, it can be used in conjunction with Illustrator or Photoshop. Building layouts of text, photos, and drawings from other sources is the name of InDesign's game.
  • Easily export and share your creations with PDF.

TUTORIALS

InDesign for You: display your photos in your layout of choice to create a gallery or digital presentation!

In Review:

The Adobe Apps are extremely powerful tools for you and your projects. Working with photos for a scientific project, there are a number of great workflows you can follow. You could use Lightroom to initially review and organize your photos and then transition to Photoshop for more cinematic, advanced edits -- or you could exclusively work in Lightroom or exclusively in Photoshop to achieve these same ends. For more artistic interpretations of your photos or to create novel drawings, infographics, or graphs, you can use Illustrator. And for creating stunning layouts to present your photos, you can use InDesign (or create galleries in Lightroom). Clearly, the permutations are endless -- have fun and enjoy getting to know the Adobe Creative Cloud! Many more fun and inspirational 1-minute tutorials can be found at creative.adobe.com! And, if you want the ultimate crash course about ALL of the Adobe Apps, check out this great 10-minute introductory video!

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