319 Use Creative Cloud to share InDesign files

- [Instructor] Did you know that you can use your free Creative Cloud file space up on Adobe servers? To share InDesign files with your clients for them to look at, perhaps to download, and for them to comment on. So if you've ever sent a proof to a client via email and maybe it's too large to include or you have to include the fonts or you send it PDF and the PDFs too large, you can just ignore all that. It's pretty cool, and I think it's a feature that a lot of InDesign users overlook.

Though, this does require that you're using some version of CC InDesign. It doesn't work for earlier versions. Let me step you through how simple this is to use. You start with some sort of layout that you're working on for the client, right? This one happens to be something about tea. Now I want to send it to my clients Olivia, for her to take a look at and add comments to. The way to do it is to, first of all, save it to your local folder called Creative Cloud Files. You might not even know that you have a folder called Creative Cloud Files.

When you installed InDesign, or any CC app, it automatically created a folder on your hard drive. Now, if you don't know where it is it is probably in your User Home folder. But you can find it quickly by opening up the Creative Cloud app that's up here in the menu bar on the mask. And down here in this area, which I don't remember the name of, in Windows. Open up the Creative Cloud app. And then go to Assets. There is three kind of assets that you have as I record this. You want to choose File.

This Creative Cloud Files. And here, you can choose to open the folder locally. To see where it is. Or you can also go to your web space that has these files. Let's look at it on my local hard drive, I'll click Open Folder. And it jumps me to the Finder. And you should, if you have a Macintosh have a shortcut here. In your Finder sidebar. And if you're on Windows you should also have a shortcut in any of your Explorer windows. Everything that you put into this Creative Cloud Files folder gets automatically synced to your Creative Cloud space in the cloud.

On Adobe's server, is where the cloud is. Just like Dropbox, where you can have a local folder that gets synced to the Dropbox files. Creative Cloud is like your little mini Dropbox. It can only hold up to 20 gigs of file space though. Anyway, so you want to save it here. Let's say that the client is Acme, okay? So I'm going to come back to InDesign and I'll do a Save As and go to my Creative Cloud Files and save in Acme Proofs. That's all, now I'm still working locally and can still work really fast.

You can see there's a little green icon here indicating that because I put it in the Creative Cloud Files folder on my hard drive. It's automatically syncing in the background to my Creative Cloud space. And when it's done, that green thing disappears. Now, I need to share it with my client. Now I can share it either from my own hard drive. Just find it here, Acme Proofs Java Co. Right click and choose Share Link, this is what you're looking for. Or, you can go to your cloud space by going to View on Website.

This time I'm going to show you, we'll just use the other button here in Creative Cloud app. Choose View on Web. And this jumps you to your Creative Cloud space. You can see I have a lot of file in my Creative Cloud Files folder. Here's Acme Proofs. I double click it. This is Java Co, I'll double click it. And then to send your client the link you come over here to the share menu. And choose, Send Link. Remember, that's just what we saw when I right clicked on it in my finder. When you choose Send Link it creates a public link of this file.

So you can share this with anybody. They don't need to use Creative Cloud, at all. There are a couple advanced options you should check out. Because by default, it will allow your client to download the actual InDesign file. And, by default, it'll allow comments. You may, or may not want them to download it. But I'm going to leave both of them on. Now here is the link. Unfortunately, you don't have a field here to let you actually write the email and send it to them. You'd have to copy it and paste it into an email or, a text or whatever.

But here we'll assume that I have sent an email to my client. And I'm going to jump over to Firefox where I'm not logged in under my Adobe account. And we'll assume my client is. Click the link int heir email. And then they go to it. It doesn't know who I am. But there is the document and it's two pages, I can flip through both pages. It is not something that you can select text out of because it's put up, I believe, it's like a JPG or PNG file.

But below it you can see the dominant colors, which fonts are being used. Which program created it. And here, I can add comments. And I'll say, this looks fantastic. It wants my name and email so I'll say, I am Joe Schmo and my email address is I think I have this address at gmail.com. And I'll add the comment. And there it appears here.

Now if we jump over to Safari where I'm logged in I can go to Activity. And there is the comment right here. I'm also notified from the Creative Cloud app when my client has added a comment. So you'll see over here there's a red dot that appears. And it says Joe Schmo said something. And then I could click this and jump right here too. If I then go back to InDesign and I make some changes and I save it.

Like say I just delete this image right here. And I'll save my changes. Creative Cloud automatically uploads the new version to the same space. It might take a little while, but what you could do then, is tell your client, all right, I made your change, I know you said it looked fantastic. But I think the top image should be deleted. Please check it out. And, what they do in their browser is they refresh. So, I'm going to refresh here. So they use the same link. You don't need to resend them another link for the second version.

There it is. And they can see their old comment and they can add a new comment. Isn't it cool? I just think it's a wonderful feature. A really nice way for you to work with your clients, whether or not they're InDesign savvy.