Re: Adobe Express Animation
Kian Trip
I have an issue that I am facing at the moment with adobe express make animations for vidoe. The problem that I have is when I finish the animation video and I add the voice to the video, after the processing time the websites become glitchy and I am being unable to download or preview the video.
So Adobe Indesign has some BASIC animations and I feel this is a completely missed opportunity on Adobe's behalf. Apps like Canva have been spreading like wildfire for years and while Adobe has released Express it is a poor cousin. The idea behind Express/Canva is to have an easy-to-create, templated video/animated solution for social media (which let's face it, is mostly video now), yet as a very heavy InDesign user I should be able to animate and export these animations while also taking advantage of the powerful mail merge (text, images, and it really needs to also have swatches), bulk relinking, dynamically updating files features that we all know and love within the adobe suite.
- Creative Cloud Library files are not dynamic, which means having to upload every single element you want to use (for me that's around about 50 every month - same templated files, different theming).
I know a lot of people think that animation and InDesign are in the past, but if you look at businesses that have basically made a multimillion-dollar business out of that base premise I guarantee you will see they have a bright future together.
Canva is one online tool, largely for amateur/office/executive users and the modestly skilled who depend on templates, automated design and smartphone-level tools to do largely cookie-cutter, often disposable work, mostly for online use. That is, folks who don't need Photoshop because their iPhone has 238 one-click filters.
InDesign is one very complex professional tool amid a set of what is pretty much the world's premiere professional tools for every form of media design and development, a set that includes extremely sophisticated video and motion graphics tools.
While I wish Adobe in general had platform-level support for HTML5 animation, on the level everything once supported Flash, I don't really care that I have to use a separate, highly optimized tool to do animations, and can't do it within a highly optimized publication design tool.
Thanks for your reply. I feel like you may have missed the point of canva. While I agree with most of the points you made about it's userbase I think you, and Adobe, have completely missed the point of why so many use it. And why there are people like me who are forced into using it even though we detest it.
I love Indesign. I can't tell you enough about how it is my go to Adobe app. The fact that it allows me to create templated work and then mail merge in my artwork and designs is invaluable to my business and creativity. I possibly use it quite differently to many people, but it's efficient and scriptable (mostly). That being said the bane of what I have to do is social media, this is where apps like Canva come in.
Social Media has changed from once being primarily static to wanting businesses/creatives to create a mass of both static and gif/video content. We are already using those same assets in Indesign, which also has animation options inside (albeit limited). Many of us who use the Adobe Suite find that while there are other tools available they too involve tedious work arounds where Indesign does 80% of the job already.
Nor, with mini-ad generators readily available (as well as being creatable with any graphics tool from MS Paint upwards) is there any need to add these features to ID, no matter how little time of anyone's day it might take.
That's fine and I respect your stance on this and I honestly feel it's an uphill battle I'm on. So I'm also going to put suggestions into after effects/premiere/express in the hopes that I might have more luck with improving efficiencies there.
That being said, a little out of the box thinking can often lead to further innovation and better solutions. For example the invention of bubble-wrap which was initially a texturerd wallpaper or the fact that viagra was initially developed for a treatment of angina, both of which were accidental revolutions.
I get it. You spend all day generating a niche production at high speed for a large company, and want your favorite tool modified to expedite your workflow. This despite other, existing tools in the box that do every aspect of that better than this one tool.
And from your perspective, it's just Adobe being a slug about adding "just these few features" (that don't really fit) (to serve your convenience) (at the expense of overall app focus and functionality) (to a tool that isn't really suited to your task anyway). If you understood how difficult it is to change one menu item on an app this complex and 'grown into' its designed niche... well.
I'd be kinder here, perhaps, if I didn't know for all but a fact that if ID suddenly ingested XD and made your need to churn out cultural detritus more streamlined, you'd be back next week insisting Adobe should make it easy to export Tik-Tok videos, too.
Learn to use these generally superb and highly optimized tools, which work together like a Broadway dance team, as they are used by hundreds of thousands of satisfied professionals. That is, don't take Canva and Figma as some kind of new, ElonMusky model for how the tools would be in a wondrous out of the box world.
It's not just me who is asking Adobe for this as I've come across several similar requests, videos, posts on the same topic. At some point Adobe already included animation within indesign, so I (and others) aren't asking for the world when we just want to export existing functionality in a format that is relevant to more people in 2023. Something that adobe constantly reviews on all their applications.
I have been using Adobe software for over 20 years and am more than proficient, and have taught many people how to really utilise the software effectively and efficiently to boost their own workflow and creativity. And yes, I do understand the level of work required for something as simple as one menu item change, as I have created several my own menus and scripts for indesign within the last week alone. Adding to this I previously I have worked with multimillion dollar global companies to create systems which improve workflows and save them time and money.
So unless you are the Adobe Indesign product manager or internal Adobe management or development teams, please mansplain to me again why your thoughts on this topic are more valid than mine and others on the internet?
(1) You want features from entirely dissimilar apps added to InDesign, for no other reason than that it would be convenient for you. You argue that some large number of ID users want this functionality, too. I can assure you that any poll of the serious Adobe/InDesign user base would show no significant interest in adding Canva/Figma type functionality to InDesign. (You are aware that Adobe bought Figma and is working to bring it into the Adobe toolset... to do what it does, for the users who need that functionality, not to add it into a tool where it would be... not particularly wanted?)
(2) You have not shown any grasp of how much work is involved adding even the simplest, most straightforward features to a complex app such as InDesign. I assure you again, adding simple, basic extensions to existing features is a tremendous effort involving many rounds of design, development and testing. To add a whole suite of almost wholly new features... it's not going to happen without overwhelming market demand, if then. Yes, I do have software development and architecture experience, and have followed enough discussions of Adobe expansions to be confident that no one knowledgeable is going to contradict this assertion.
Based on those two points, I don't need to know any more about your level of experience or ability to make my responses. Perhaps you've used Adobe tools as long as I have, but you have not seemingly engaged the larger community, such as this one, to have gained an understanding of the tools and their evolution beyond a small-user perspective.
So again, a sincere apology for not remaining more civil, but I'll stand by every statement I've made about the need for these features within InDesign, the lack of demand from most of its user base and the extreme effort it would take to include them.
That was really presumptuous of you. Do you know her background, do you know her skill set, do you know her daily flow? Your response sounds like you are taking a personal affront to anyone using the tool outside of the norms you have determined are correct. It is a tool, as such, it can have many uses.
Minecraft was initially developed as a sandbox game where players could create and explore virtual worlds. However, it is also used as a powerful educational tool in classrooms around the world to teach everything from coding and math to history and foreign languages.
What we can say with relative certainty is that both companies have significant userbases for their design tools; they are both well-established and in continual expansion; and it is highly unlikely that either will be disappearing any time soon.
As for the quality of the templates on offer from Canva and Adobe Express, both products score top marks here. All their templates are very professional in appearance, with a wide selection of styles available from each, ranging from the corporate to the eccentric.
In addition to resizing your creations, it also lets you automatically translate the text content of your design to repurpose your work across multiple language versions thanks to a built-in AI translation feature.
Adobe Express and Canva both provide you with cloud storage space to hold all of your designs, and they let you upload your own assets too (allowing you to integrate your existing images and videos into new projects).
Other improvements include the addition of ready-made video templates, video background removal, text animation tools, as well as some stock video clips that can be added to your Adobe Express video projects.
03c5feb9e7