It’s that time once again! Next week I’m headed to my favorite conference (Photoshop World) to teach and I’m excited about my new classes! I’ll be teaching the regular favorites on Lightroom and Adobe Muse CC and my popular Adobe Premiere Pro CC for Photographers class. However, this year I’m adding a 2nd Lightroom Class as well as a NEW class on “Using Type to Make Your Designs Pop”. I’ll also be at the Adobe Booth doing sessions on “Adding Effects to Images”, “New Tools for Design” and I’m doing a session on the show floor in the Kelby Theater on “Creating a Successful Stock Photography Business”
I’m looking forward to seeing you all there!
Be sure to follow me on Periscope as I will be doing LIVE broadcasts from the conference!
@TerryLWhite
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All new versions of your favorite Adobe creative applications are here! As you might expect it has been a busy few months for me not only getting up to speed on all that’s new for Design and Photography (the areas I focus on), but also creating content so that you can get up to speed quickly.
Before we get to the content let’s talk about installation
Last year when we released the 2014 Release of Creative Cloud there was a lot of confusion because the installer installed the new CC 2014 apps along side your existing CC apps. People didn’t know if they needed to keep the older apps installed or not. This time around the powers that be have decided that it’s best to “uninstall” your older CC applications by default. Of course you can choose NOT to do this if you want to hang on to your older applications. My colleague Jeff Tranberry has done a great job outlining what’s going here.
What’s NEW in the 2015 Release of Adobe Creative Cloud?
I just released 25 NEW videos outlining the individual top features of Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Muse CC, Lightroom CC and the updated Mobile Apps. I put them all in a single playlist to make it easy on ya:
I’ve been doing video tutorials since 2006 and I mostly concentrate on the Adobe’s design and photography products. However, I do dabble in the video tools too. Last May I thought it would be helpful to my followers if I released a How To Get Started with Adobe Premiere Pro CC – 10 Things Beginners Want to Know How To Do. Little did I know then that it would rise to the number three spot of my top 10 most watched videos each month with close to a quarter million views to date. Of course the other side effect was that I got tons of requests to do one on After Effects. While I use Premiere Pro CC on a somewhat regular basis, I haven’t really used After Effects in several months. I didn’t let that stop me from answering the call and yesterday I released the long awaited How To Get Started with Adobe After Effects CC – 10 Things Beginners Want to Know How to Do. This video like its sister video has already had a large number of views in less than 24 hours. You asked for it, here it is:
The February 2015 Updates of Adobe Muse CC and Adobe InDesign CC
I also recently released videos covering the latest updates of Adobe Muse CC and Adobe InDesign CC. Check them out:
B&H Photo and Video now sells the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan
That’s right you can buy a year of Adobe Creative Cloud for photographers, which includes Adobe Photoshop CC, Lightroom 5 and Lightroom Mobile. You can get it here:
One New Years Resolution completed. At the beginning of the year I promised to deliver a new Adobe Creative Cloud Tutorial each day during the month of January starting on January 2nd. I’m happy to say that my 30 Days of Creative Cloud Tutorials are done and have been very well received! At last count the video have had over 80,000 views and climbing. I also received lots of direct feedback on Twitter and my Facebook page. Most of the tutorials focused on the questions I get every day over and over again. I also took the liberty of working in mobile workflows wherever I could. Of course I’ll continue to do more throughout the year and cover new features as they are added to Creative Cloud. In the mean time, check out what you’ve missed here in this playlist featuring all 30 videos:
Hey everyone, the good folks over at Bluehost.com are offering my readers 42% off web hosting if you signup by January 31, 2015. As you know, Bluehost is now my preferred hosting service and I have successfully moved my sites there with no issues to date.
If you need good web hosting for your Adobe Muse websites, Lightroom galleries, etc., then check out Bluehost.com here.
In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV I answer a Facebook Fan request on “how did they do that?” Specifically what he wanted to know how to do was the Full Screen Slideshow Scroll Effect seen here on a recent Adobe Muse “Site of the Day.” I was curious myself and I took the approach of “how would I do that” if I wanted to do it for my own site? In the video below you’ll see my approach for having a full screen slideshow that changes the background image of the site as visitors scroll/navigate down the page (using scroll effects).
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 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:
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.
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)
Right on the heals of the 2014 Release of Adobe Creative Cloud in June, the Adobe Muse team has already come out with a NEW feature update for August 2014. In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV, I’ll show you 3 NEW features in Adobe Muse CC for this August 2014 Update.
While you’re here, check out this video on How To Create Custom Page Navigation Menus
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:
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