I get asked all the time, “how do I create a custom menu in Adobe Muse?” In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV, I’ll show you how to create a Super Mega Custom Menu in Adobe Muse CC. The menu of all menus that you can do whatever you want in.
Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?
See more of my Adobe Creative Cloud Videos on my Adobe Creative Cloud TV and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App! My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:
In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV, I’ll show you how to use the three NEW Filters in Photoshop CC 2014 in the October update. You’ll see the design process using the new Flame Filter, Tree Filter and Picture Frame Filter.
Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?
See more of my Adobe Creative Cloud Videos on my Adobe Creative Cloud TV and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:
Wow! I just checked my YouTube views and noticed that I have passed the 20 Million View mark! I wanted to take a few moments to thank all my viewers and supporters. Whenever I’m out at an event, conference or on tour so many of you make it a point to come up to me and thank me for my videos or to tell me how my videos have taught you various things. This of course encourages me to do more and to continue doing what I do.
I also noticed that I now have over 180,000 subscribers to my channel. It seems like it was just yesterday when I received the plaque above recognizing me for surpassing the 100,000 subscriber mark. I expect to hit the 200,000 subscriber mark some time around the beginning of 2015.
Thank you guys so much!
As much as I love doing my videos, believe it or not the hardest thing to come up with is new topics. More often than not I dismiss a topic that pops in my head because I think “everyone already knows that.” However, when I actually do go ahead and record it anyway it’s usually a hit. So please sound off in the comments about which upcoming topics you’d like to see videos on. Now before you jump in and start suggesting things, keep in mind that I (nor does anyone else), know everything or every product. So asking for a Dreamweaver topic or an After Effects (beyond the basics) topic probably won’t happen. It would be like me asking you to record a video on open heart surgery (unless of course you are a surgeon). I primarily focus on Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Muse and Lightroom. I dabble in Premiere Pro and a little After Effects. Now that we have that out of the way, feel free to tell me what you’d like to see:
After posting my last update about how I had built my photography website with Adobe Lightroom and plug-ins from The Turning Gate, I started getting questions like: “Could you build your site with Adobe Muse CC?” Of course the answer was always “yes I could, but…” There was a big reason that I built this particular site with Lightroom instead of Muse. I’m always updating my photography galleries with new photos and removing older photos. I manage all of my portfolios and this process with Collections in Lightroom. With the Web Publishing Bundle from The Turning Gate I’m able to update those galleries at any time with the click of the “Publish” button right in Lightroom. However, on the other hand Adobe Muse would allow me to customize the look and feel of the site more easily and basically do anything I wanted on any page at any time without having to write code or CSS.
Hmmmm, why not use them both?
The more I thought about it the more I figured I could have my cake and eat it too. I could build all the non-gallery pages (Home, About me, Contact, etc.) using Adobe Muse and use Lightroom and The Turning Gate plug-ins to continue to update the galleries. It would take a little more setup up front, but once the work was completed I would have the ease of updating the galleries anytime that I like right from Lightroom AND the ease of customization for the rest of the site using Adobe Muse.
Using Adobe Muse CC I customized the look of the site and navigation
I set out to complete this task this past weekend and I put the new site up (terrywhitephotography.com) on Monday. As with any new site I’m still tweaking things here and there, but I’m LOVING IT so far! I built a standard Adobe Muse site with all three layouts (Desktop, Tablet and Phone) and I also made sure to include the pages that would need to be in the menu, but not actually built in Muse (Galleries, Videos, Tutorials and Buy Prints). Using the trick of Excluding those Pages from the menu allowed me to put custom links in to the Galleries and Videos pages produced by Lightroom/The Turning Gate. I also had to modify my Lightroom produced pages to point back to the main site when someone clicks on home, about and contact.
Using Lightroom and the CE4 Web Publishing System from The Turning Gate I can publish my galleries to my website.
I’ve anticipated at least some of the questions you may have, so here we go:
FAQ
Q. What did Muse let you do that you couldn’t have done with The Turning Gate?
A. The first one was I’ve always wanted a full screen slideshow on the homepage of the desktop layout. It was so easy to do this with the Widgets in Muse and I’m not sure if there was an effective way to do this in The Turning Gate AND have the slideshow work the way I liked.
Q. Your older site was “responsive” and currently Muse isn’t. How did that work out with this website makeover?
A. Well the pages from Lightroom/The Turning Gate are still responsive and therefore when you click on my Galleries page on a mobile device you still get that experience. However, for the rest of the pages made with Muse I was able to optimize the content for Desktop, Tablet and Phone just the way I wanted. So it works out fine.
Q. If you had to do this from scratch, which Turning Gate Plug-ins would you need?
A. Since you’re going to need at least 3 of their plug-ins (Gallery, Auto-Index and Publisher) you’re still better off going with the CE4 Web Publishing Bundle as it will include everything you need for one price.
Q. Will Adobe Muse ever be “Responsive”
A. I get that question a lot and Adobe Muse improves rapidly with new features. Since “ever” is a long time, I would guess that you’ll see the features that people demand the most at some point! (how’s that for a non-committal, keep my job kinda answer?)
Q. Since you’re using Adobe Muse to create the home page and the full screen slideshow, what happens when you want to update it?
A. I did give up the ability to update the homepage slideshow with Lightroom automatically, but since I don’t update it as often I’m ok with exporting images from Lightroom manually when I want to update that one slideshow.
Q. What if I want to add music to my Muse site, HTML 5 video (like you did with the Turning Gate) or even have a template to get started with, what can I do?
A. I have really been impressed with MuseThemes.com. They make a variety of add-ons for Muse including widgets and templates that take Muse beyond the standard set of functionality. They (like most 3rd party add-ons) fill in the gaps.
Q. Will you be adding more Muse features to your site?
A. Yep, now that the hard part (which wasn’t so hard) is out of the way, I can add more features from Muse and use this site to showcase what can be done with Adobe Muse over time. I’ve already take advantage of the full screen slideshow, full width slideshow, SVG support, contact forms, social widgets, composition widget (for my phone menu), menus, TypeKit fonts, custom hyperlink colors, transparency and of course some gratuitous use of scroll effects 🙂 .
One more thing…
Your site is only as good as the web hosting that serves it up to your visitors. So far I couldn’t be happier with Bluehost.com. I was originally turned on to them by The Turning Gate and now they now host all my websites.
In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV, I’ll show you how to use the NEW App, Adobe Brush CC to create custom brushes for Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC and Adobe Photoshop Sketch right on your iPhone or iPad. You can download Adobe Brush CC for FREE here from the .
Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?
See more of my Adobe Creative Cloud Videos on my Adobe Creative Cloud TV and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:
Hot off the heels of the big release for 2014 of Creative Cloud, the engineers have been hard at work delivering more value to Creative Cloud members. I’m here to show you the top new features for the October 2014 update to Adobe Creative Cloud.
See What’s New In the October 2014 Update to Photoshop CC
See What’s New In the October 2014 Update to Adobe Illustrator CC
See What’s New In the October 2014 Update to Adobe InDesign CC
See What’s New In the October 2014 Update to Adobe Muse CC
Also check out the NEW Mobile Apps:
Adobe Photoshop Mix (now on iPhone as well as iPad)
In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV, I’ll show you how to retouch a photo in Photoshop for a more mature audience.
Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?
See more of my Adobe Creative Cloud Videos on my Adobe Creative Cloud TV and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App! My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:
In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV I’ll show you how to create a Fixed Layout eBook (epub), with interactivity using Adobe InDesign CC.
Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?
See more of my Adobe Creative Cloud Videos on my Adobe Creative Cloud TV and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App! My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:
I will be the first to admit that when I saw that Adobe Photoshop CC had 3D printing capability I thought “oh cool”, but I never thought that I would actually use it. I couldn’t think of a single thing that I wanted to have printed in 3D. It’s great for architects, designers, modelers, and anyone else that wants to turn their concepts into real objects. Again, COOL! However, I just couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to have printed from my own designs.
Then I had to give a presentation on it. Anyone that knows me knows that I don’t like to speak on a subject that I really don’t have first hand knowledge of. So it was time to have something 3D printed and I figured my logo was as good as any other object. I opened up my logo in Photoshop and removed my name from it. I just wanted the “TW” part of it as 3D print. Next I used the 3D Workspace and simply converted my logo into a real 3D object simply by using the Extrusion feature. I added a metal material to it and it was ready to go.
This is when I got excited
I wasn’t excited to have my logo in plastic. However, once I saw all the material choices that Shapeways (one of the service providers that you can send things to directly from Photoshop) offered I was blown away. I knew they had metal, but I had no idea that you can get bronze, copper, gold plated bronze, 14K gold, silver and even platinum. Wow! Suddenly 3D printing became very very COOL! I would have never gone into a jewelry store to have a custom piece of jewelry made for myself. I like jewelry, but not that much. However, knowing that I could do it myself and have it 3D printed and shipped to me made me excited. I started thinking of all the custom gifts I could make for loved ones.
How much is it?
As with anything custom, the price will vary by the size and complexity of your object. The prices for my 3D prints were more than reasonable for what I was going to be getting. Since it was my first one I wasn’t quite ready to step into precious metals yet, but I did go with a small gold plated brass version with a loop that I added in Photoshop so that I can put it on a chain.
My prices were:
IN: 0.999 w x 0.702 d x 1.04 h – Polished Brass (Jewelry) $39.88
IN: 2.761 w x 1.852 d x 2.269 h – Metallic Plastic $37.89
IN: 2.761 w x 1.852 d x 2.269 h – Stainless Steel $172.37
How long did it take?
I submitted my order on August 7th and received them via UPS on August 19th (originally estimated as September 4th). They came much quicker than I expected.
The Bottom Line
Photoshop CC is allowing people more than ever to realize there visions in physical form. The ability to design something in Photoshop and have it 3D printed and shipped right to your door is amazing. If you’re lucky enough to own a 3D printer you can print right to it from Photoshop. As a matter of fact you can even buy one here. Photoshop 3D is not hard to use and it takes about 5 seconds to do simple extrusions. Give it a shot!
It’s almost time for my favorite conference, Photoshop World! It’s time to head back to Las Vegas and I’m really looking forward to it. Not only do I get to see so many of you, but I’m psyched about teaching some updated classes.
First up I’m teaching an updated “Intro to Adobe Muse CC” class. I did this class at Photoshop World in Atlanta and it went over great. This time I get to teach it on the brand new rewritten, 64bit native Mac/Win version. If you’ve always wanted to be able to create your own website, but don’t want to write code you’ll leave this class knowing how.
Also back by popular demand is my “Lightroom 5 Workflow” class. In this class I’ll take you through my Lightroom workflow from start to finish.
I’m also teaching a brand new “How to Edit Video with Adobe Premiere Pro CC”. This class is aimed at Photographers rather than videographers. I aim to cut through all the jargon and the interface to get right to the basics of how to edit video from your DSLR or other video cameras, smartphones, etc.
I’m also going to be doing short presentations in the Adobe booth on the trade show floor. I’ll be showing “Introduction to Creative Cloud”, “Photoshop CC Tips”, “New Tools for Designers” and “Lightroom 5 and Lightroom Mobile”,
Be sure to stop by and say that you read my blog and watch my videos, you never know what small giveaways I may have in my pocket. 😉
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