Adobe Products You Need to Adopt into Your Workflow

Adobe is a widely-known company with industry-standard tools used across almost every discipline. Lucky for us, Adobe has so much market share that they are used in almost every single company, from tech to non-tech (whatever that means) companies. If you are early in your Learning Design career and feel comfortable with Techsmith products then this is the next step in your career development.

Build Reusable Assets with Adobe Express

Say goodbye to Canva and hello to using all your Adobe libraries in one location. Express is Adobe’s version of what Canva made back in 2013, only with the power of the Adobe Suite behind it. They are giving this away for free as of November 2022, so take advantage of this platform now and create templates, design assets, and everything in between.

How we use it

It takes time to find every image, icon, marketing-approved content, or brand color(s) on the fly. Adobe allows you to make custom libraries and share them with your team for easy access. Add the power of templatized images in Adobe Express and you can easily share (and have some semblance of control) branded assets that your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can edit and export. You no longer need to be the funnel in the operation. Design it once and use it forever.

Even better, if you make any changes to the alpha it will update the versions your SMEs have access to, at least in their Express instance.

The Powerhouse of the Video Design World - After Effects (AE)

This tool can seem daunting at first but with the help of a few tutorials or templates, you can get up and running in no time. AE is our go-to resource for intro/outro wrappers, lower thirds, and animated scenes rebuilt from stale PowerPoint slides. You don’t need to be a pro to make a good-looking product. Devote time to learning the basics, buy a few templates to get going, and make one minor tweak each time you touch the program. With a few excellent products and happy faces from SMEs under your belt, you’ll be creating full-time in AE in no time.

How we use it

There are some simple tricks to using AE effectively, especially if you’re building from PowerPoint, that will make you look like a full-time animator in no time. E.g., we created bespoke reusable templates simply by finding assets (i.e., opener or agenda slides) that don’t often change, saving each asset as a PNG, and then animating it with Mister Horse . The outcome looks phenomenal, and the tool does all the work for you.

Pro tip: Build a template in AE, export it as a MOGRT file in Premiere Pro , and share it with your colleagues. You can build your template with adjustable colors, text, and maintain all the animations on the backend, and reuse them whenever you want. We do this for intros and lower thirds.

Simplify Your Assets and Work Across Teams

I’ll be the first to admit that Premiere Pro (PP) terrified me and it took me years to finally give it a chance. Camtasia was simple, like driving an automatic Toyota Corolla. PP felt like getting behind the console of a jet. Very intimidating and overwhelming.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the idea of trying a new tool, head over to Adobe and check out their tutorials . We like this tool because you can keep all your assets in one location, work on multiple modules in the same project file, and implement reusable assets like MOGRTs and templates with little effort.

Adobe’s integrated tools make it easy to jump into an After Effects or Illustrator file, make some quick tweaks, and then see the changes immediately in your PP file without having to reload the asset.

How we use it

Did we already talk about MOGRTs? Check out Adobe Stock for thousands of reusable and editable templates you can use today. We also recommend Mister Horse’s Transitions as their free pack is all you need to make showcase movement between clips.

Keep Your Changes Where They Belong - Together

Frame.io is a media hub that allows you to share media, track comments, and streamline your workflow across internal and external SMEs. It integrates directly with Premiere Pro so you have clear timestamps of change requests at moment they happen.

Working in Word and trying to track changes with time stamps that change during development is a thing of the past. Frame.io will make your life easier than ever and, more importantly, make your SMEs happy by giving them an easy reviewer experience. It was purchased by Adobe in 2022 and can be purchased directly through them. As of the time of this article, the details are still being worked on but we can’t recommend it enough.

How we use it

Review, collaborate, and integrate with your video editing tool!

Final Thoughts

That does it for our top Adobe tools for video workflow optimization. If you aren’t familiar with Illustrator or Photoshop , be sure to check those out too.

Answer in the comment section below.?

Which of these tools can you see you or your team using and what problem would it solve?