If you are a Photographer, then getting your work out there for everyone to see is probably your highest priority (after taking the pictures in the first place). Adobe Slate is a perfect way to get your work out there, as well as looking amazing and more engaging for your viewers.
This post is tied in with the UK Photography show (March 19 to 22 near Birmingham), where Adobe will be having a seminar room with a free talks, as well as a daily competition to win a 12 month complimentary subscription to the Creative Cloud Photography plan. N.B. Also, Adobe has a discount code for your ticket, just use “ADOTPS16” in the discount code box when purchasing your ticket, and it will take the single ticket price from £13.95 to £10.95.
So how does Adobe Slate it work? To give you an idea, I have created two projects from previous photography trips, that you can view :-
To start, just login with your Creative Cloud Adobe ID. If you don’t already have one, you can get one here, alternatively you can download a trial of Creative Cloud Complete or the Photography plan and give Adobe Slate a go.
Once you have your Adobe ID, just login at slate.adobe.com to get going.
Once you have logged in, you will see lots of samples, as well as a plus button on the top left of the screen. Clicking on the samples will give you some content ideas.
This will create you a new project.
The first thing is to choose a theme, you can do this by clicking on the “Themes” text at the top right hand side. A theme can be changed anytime, even after a project has been published.
To give impact to your project, you can add a front page or initial image as well as some text. Do this by clicking on the plus in the white circle at the bottom of the page. To add text to the title just type the text where the title/subtitle is located. Once you have done this, then click on the plus in the white circle at the bottom of the page, then you are free to choose where the photos come from.
I use Lightroom and Lightroom mobile for my source of work and images. You can also choose Dropbox, your local computer or the Creative Cloud. Once you have your source, click it and the contents will be shown.
To add the image, just click it and it will be added to the page.
Paging up will take you to the next page, as well as the narrative/story part of the project. For me, the fastest way of doing this is by using a word processor to get the main story written (this will do basic tasks, like spell checking etc). Once this has been done, it can be copied and pasted into the document.
At each insertion point in the Slate project, the plus button can be pressed, which allow you to add text / photo to tell your story. If a photo is chosen, the the image panel (same as the above will be shown).
If text is chosen, the text formatting mode is shown.
You can also make lovely transitions using Glides with a text insert, as below.
There are controls for this mode as well, and these can be updated by clicking the picture. Focal point allows you to move the top start position of the picture during the glide.
At any point you can review your story, by clicking Preview at the top of the screen. This will be how others see your work, once it’s published.
Once you are ready to publish live, you can click Share at the top of the screen. Then, clicking Publish, will process the request and give you options to share across social networks.
Here you can copy and paste the short URL, as well as post to other social networks.
We wish you the best of luck with your project and look forward to seeing your results! Please feel free to see what’s on at the show at the Adobe Seminar room, the schedule of talks can be found here.