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Pro-Tips: Create Holiday Content in Adobe Express

For

Adobe Live

Date

December 6, 2023

Series Name

Creative Cloud

Join Alex Lazaris in this episode of ProTips as he shows you how easy it is to create holiday content in Adobe Express.

Timestamps

0:00:00 Start 0:02:00 Today’s project 0:05:55 Generate expand 0:02:30 Text generation 07:00 Adding text 0:10:18 Generating a birthday cake 0:15:30 Creating a scene 0:24:45 Recap

Broadcast transcription:

Transcription is automatically generated and may contain errors.

hello hello everyone my name is Alex Lazaris and I am so excited to be back

0:22

with another Pro tip stream today so for

0:25

all of y'all in chat I see Gareth Jack

0:28

uh Oliver what's up every everybody

0:30

hello hello good morning happy evening

0:32

good afternoon wherever you're tuning in

0:33

from today today we are going to be

0:35

working on holiday greeting cards built

0:38

in Express so we'll be doing a bunch of

0:40

different collateral we're going to be

0:41

using Genai  we're going to be using

0:42

generator F fill using type treatments a

0:45

bunch of really cool fun Express

0:47

templates and uh kind of AI forward

0:50

pieces and we're going to be wrapping

0:52

them up into some sweet little socials

0:55

for you to kind of run with or if you

0:56

want to you can print them off and use

0:58

it for your family's you know holiday

1:00

cards greeting cards holiday party

1:02

invites You Name It We got it we're

1:04

going to be doing a lot of fun stuff

1:05

today so if you have any questions or if

1:06

you want to you know collaborate in real

1:08

time I love taking chats input feel free

1:11

to come into chat over at be.net Adobe

1:14

live where I'll be reading your comments

1:16

and concerns or questions anything

1:18

you've got we'll be jumping in right

1:19

there so for those of you who don't know

1:21

who I am I'm Alex Lazaris I run a design

1:23

studio called Lazaris uh you can check

1:25

out our work over at wearelazaris.com and if you

1:28

do love this content and you want to see

1:29

more you can obviously go to the Adobe

1:31

live YouTube channel or you can go to

1:33

our website and check out our broadcast

1:35

tab over here in resources and then

1:37

you'll see all the previous streams that

1:39

I've done on Adobe Express or you know

1:42

illustrator Photoshop any Adobe live

1:43

stream I've done it's all there so make

1:46

sure you go check it out anyways without

1:48

further ado if you haven't seen Express

1:50

you don't know what Express is Adobe

1:52

Express is kind of I like to explain it

1:54

as like a Swiss army knife for your

1:56

creative needs you don't have to be a

1:57

designer you don't have to be a creative

1:59

to use Adobe Express it is free program

2:02

for you but it does get better with your

2:04

Adobe uh subscription so with that being

2:08

said what you can do in Express is you

2:10

can you know use templates to start off

2:12

your projects you can make logos I've

2:14

done lots of lots of Brands inside of

2:15

adobe Express you can also edit videos

2:18

cut them down you can post them social

2:20

you can even schedule it so if you've

2:21

never used it this is what your homepage

2:23

looks like in in Adobe Express what

2:26

we're going to be doing today is holiday

2:27

greeting cards or party cards

2:30

so that's what we're going to be doing

2:32

inside this we can do like text to image

2:34

if you haven't seen this tool it is

2:36

awesome we're going to start off with

2:37

some like winter wonderland scenes and

2:39

see what we can get from there and then

2:40

we're going to start to implement that

2:42

into our greeting cards anak says hello

2:44

is it a holiday content we don't use

2:46

comic Papyrus that is a great question

2:49

it is a very great question uh again

2:52

probably don't have comic Papyrus

2:54

working today which would be a real

2:55

bummer but we'll see so we're going to

2:57

go into text to image we're going to use

2:58

that as our foundational first piece in

3:00

Express we go text image so we're going

3:03

to go in this little corner we going to

3:04

say um

3:07

winter Log

3:10

Cabin

3:12

cozy let's see generate and we'll see

3:14

what it gives us and what we can do once

3:16

we've generated this image is we can

3:18

change the content type so you can go

3:21

down from this drop down over here you

3:23

click it you don't have to Art direct it

3:24

if you don't want to you can click it to

3:26

be photo and this will try to make it

3:27

more photo realistic graphic and art

3:30

both are a little bit more stylized

3:31

graphic is going to be a little bit more

3:33

painterly um this is actually kind of

3:36

cool let's see what we got here we got

3:37

it will get four options and we can kind

3:39

of reconfigure it if we need to we can

3:41

rerun that prompt or we can kind of art

3:43

direct it a little bit more as

3:46

well Oliver says what you haven't added

3:48

comic paparis to express yet no it's

3:50

just it keeps falling out for me so I

3:52

have to keep like uploading the file

3:53

every time uh this is cute this is cute

3:57

this is cute this is cute h

4:02

H let me see if I can see if I can get a

4:05

little bit more white space in there

4:06

winter log cabin on

4:10

Horizon cozy let's see if if that'll

4:14

make the Log Cabin a little bit smaller

4:17

I want to have a little bit more space

4:19

if possible that I can kind of

4:21

put some additional like maybe some

4:24

writing some copy in there and say

4:25

you're invited no I think we're probably

4:28

going to get

4:30

all this this kind of sick though uh all

4:33

right so we're gonna run with this all

4:36

right so we're going to do this and then

4:38

we're going to

4:39

say let's just start to go in and then

4:42

we can do some like text here let's go

4:45

add your text and then be like

4:50

uh winter

4:53

camping trip I guess it's not really

4:55

camping if you're in a log cabin but you

4:58

know maybe

5:00

Source Sands let's see what do I have

5:02

let's see let's

5:04

see I think I have comic papyrus in

5:11

here

5:14

comic nope no comic Papyrus but we'll do

5:17

this cute cozy okay let's see if we can

5:20

pull in a little bit more of

5:21

this that little like

5:26

moon what up Carol how you doing

5:31

winter camping trip we'll say something

5:35

like we can like use that real quick if

5:38

we want

5:41

to maybe I'll maybe I'll make it a

5:43

little bit more fun so if you haven't

5:45

used the text tool here you can go over

5:47

into the left panel you can change out

5:49

your type face you can make it you know

5:51

change the weights if you want to you

5:53

can also use different uh text layout

5:56

tools I really like the dynamic tool you

5:58

can do some really fun Stu stocking

6:00

pieces here like this and we can like

6:02

kind of pull it into the corner or we

6:05

can make it a circle and try to make it

6:06

feel like more of like a camping badge

6:08

so we say like

6:10

winter we'll say not camping we'll do

6:14

clamping

6:18

trip we'll do like that winter glamping

6:22

small in the

6:25

corner Boop winter

6:28

glamping and and then I'll just do like

6:33

another I'm just duplicate that over

6:36

just there we go and then do 2023 oh man

6:40

we're gonna be running out of saying

6:42

2023

6:44

soon since this is holiday themed does

6:48

anybody in chat have uh you like New

6:51

Year's resolutions you're

6:54

doing love to know what kind of plans

6:56

you've got for

6:57

2024 we got witer clamping we got a

6:59

little badge there boom done glamping

7:02

yeah all over have you heard of glamping

7:04

before it's glamorous camping it's like

7:06

where you'd have this beautiful Log

7:07

Cabin that you'd stay in and then

7:10

consider it because it's a cabin that

7:11

you're camping but you're really just

7:13

clamping it's glamorized

7:15

camping you don't know now you

7:18

know all right let's go okay so we got

7:21

that easy that's one one quick

7:23

generative fill we made an illustration

7:25

boom done text tool all right let me

7:28

show you what else we can do within

7:29

Express so we can do generative fill if

7:31

you want we can go in there and like

7:32

change stuff remove stuff that's fine we

7:35

don't need to do that uh right now so

7:39

anaka says convince Alex to use comic

7:41

papus in every design true true uh

7:46

that's a great New Year's resolution all

7:48

right text to template so we could do um

7:51

I tried to do this with the holiday

7:53

cards earlier didn't really work very

7:55

well for me but we could do like

7:57

birthday party

7:59

invite text the template and this will

8:02

try to like create a template for you

8:04

based off of your prompt this is a new

8:07

feuture and it's only getting better uh

8:09

but let's see what

8:12

happens Carol says don't hold your

8:14

breath on that one be happy if he saves

8:17

you know the great thing about working

8:18

and express is it's constantly saving

8:20

for you so in the background you don't

8:22

have to worry about you know your

8:23

computer crashing or you know a program

8:27

breaking on you no it's already

8:29

happening in the back end for you and

8:31

you're not constantly having to press

8:32

command s or contrs all so this is like

8:35

text the template you can kind of see

8:36

how it works here let's grab this uh

8:39

cake this template and you can kind of

8:40

see how the template's going to like be

8:42

built out based off your text to

8:44

template

8:47

tool boom now we're going to go in there

8:50

we can edit it

8:51

up so this is a great piece if you are

8:54

trying to like quickly you know instead

8:56

of typing and searching and scrolling

8:57

scrolling scrolling for templates if you

8:59

want to just like give it a prompt and

9:00

try to work off of that that's great

9:02

option for you as well um the only thing

9:04

I'd probably change on this would be

9:05

like maybe reframe this a little bit so

9:10

it's a little bit more even so just by

9:12

sliding that over it kind of aligns that

9:14

Center text a little bit more and then

9:15

we can always change you know background

9:17

colors and pieces and stuff like that if

9:19

we want to but we're not going to do

9:20

that because I don't need to spend all

9:22

the time on the birthday invite when

9:24

we're doing holiday invites but I just

9:25

wanted to show you really quickly text

9:27

the template and how that works

9:29

all right so you can do text effect as

9:31

well this we'll make one of these and

9:34

we'll bring it into our actual project

9:36

so um let's do um

9:40

Christmas tree

9:43

lights

9:47

generate make sure to put puns in the

9:49

text template that's

9:52

great all right we'll do uh happy

9:57

holidays and

10:01

ah we'll let it start trying to do its

10:04

little

10:10

rendering happy

10:13

holidays boom we can loosen it up a bit

10:18

too and then let's see

10:24

here the a is a Struggle

10:28

Bus

10:31

all right let's use General SS and then

10:34

do

10:37

bold see if that a gets fixed a bit more

10:39

for

10:41

us so now it's going to re render on all

10:43

that boom we can also change it if we

10:47

want to uh I'm going

10:50

to just retype it all on

10:54

caps and then I'm going

10:57

to do a

11:01

Arch boom I think that'll be nice and

11:05

cute and then what what we'll do is

11:07

we're going to download

11:09

this holidays boom cool download

11:17

PNG and we can take this now and we'll

11:20

implement it into our own little

11:22

template so go back here and then we can

11:25

go okay uh let's start you know you can

11:27

start off with these default if you want

11:29

to I personally I'm going to start from

11:32

the flyer template since we are trying

11:33

to think about this as like holiday

11:35

cards maybe you're doing it from home uh

11:37

we got this holiday template right here

11:39

you can also just type in holiday

11:43

party and then you pull up and it'll

11:46

filter based off of that um this one's a

11:49

really strong one as well so I'm going

11:50

to just use this you can go in there you

11:53

can start editing things you can change

11:55

the fill the fill colors if you want to

11:57

make them black white whatever you want

12:00

if you do want to like streamline some

12:02

of these color pieces you know you can

12:04

go in there or if you have a brand saved

12:07

you can also go in there and adjust

12:09

stuff see here that doesn't do anything

12:12

on the background colors okay cool theme

12:15

see color

12:22

theme well I'm going just reverse all

12:26

that but we can just yeah we can go in

12:28

there manually and just update

12:29

everything if we want

12:34

to I don't know what I'm doing anymore

12:36

I'm just clicking random colors

12:38

experimenting and having fun with it you

12:40

go

12:41

in so yeah you can go in there adjust

12:44

all this copy if you want to you can

12:45

also do like different templates so you

12:48

go you know browse templates text the

12:51

template

12:53

nope holiday

12:57

card

13:02

perfect this is what I'm looking for

13:04

here so we can do holiday card you can

13:06

go in here and you can go in and remove

13:08

background so if you've never used this

13:11

before should give us a really good

13:14

version so instead of having to go into

13:15

Photoshop you can go in here and do a

13:17

quick cuts on your remove background

13:20

hopefully there's enough contrast

13:21

between the foreground and the

13:22

background then it'll be able to like

13:23

streamline yeah it's pretty good get a

13:26

little messy around her hair that's

13:27

really where the flyways and the issues

13:29

around like having really messy hair and

13:31

a messy background can come in uh you

13:34

can go in there and paint over it if you

13:35

want to uh just to adjust stuff but

13:39

we're going to just change that and then

13:41

I'm going to go into media over here on

13:43

the left panel and go into my stock

13:46

images so one of the things that I

13:49

mentioned earlier is that uh Adobe

13:51

Express is free free to use but it does

13:54

get better with your Adobe subscription

13:56

so if you are subscribed like I am

13:58

you'll see see this like Crown icons

14:00

over here in the left bar these Crown

14:02

icons uh means that it's included with

14:05

your Adobe subscription so you do get

14:07

these stock credits to go into it just

14:09

go in and be like

14:12

holiday

14:15

family got this holiday family I can go

14:18

in here I can also what I was really

14:20

meaning to do was go into this

14:26

and that's what I wanted to do just go

14:29

up to the replace icon

14:31

there and

14:33

then

14:39

adjust I'm going to just slide over I

14:42

double clicked into that

14:43

image just going to shrink it a tiny

14:46

tiny

14:48

bit cool cute little holiday card we can

14:53

go into the background and change it up

14:55

if we want it to be like more red or

14:58

like a this

14:59

uh beige color I think is actually

15:00

really nice on it um and we can go in

15:03

and we can also go to media and then

15:07

upload from device and then I'm going to

15:10

go

15:10

to uh downloads there we

15:14

go boom and then I'm gonna upload oh no

15:18

didn't give me the

15:21

transparent all right hold on we

15:24

go just imagine that I had a transparent

15:26

version of that in there so that's what

15:28

we're do oh I see that there's

15:31

this color here I'm just going to go in

15:33

here and choose that

15:39

red boom get those in there that feels

15:43

really cozy and

15:46

nice all right so one of the other

15:49

incredible things that you can do within

15:51

Express is obviously you've got this

15:52

holiday card you can print it up send it

15:54

out if you want to you can also go add

15:58

um duplicate so I've gotten to out two

16:01

of these if I go to my pages you'll see

16:04

them side by side if I wanted to I could

16:06

have that as the front side and then go

16:09

on to page two and then make this the

16:11

back side so I'm going to do the back

16:13

side you know we can just remove a

16:16

couple of these things and just be like

16:18

you

16:19

know I grab some Lauren

16:27

ipsum

16:31

so we're just going to grab just a

16:34

little bit of War nipsom going in

16:37

here and then I'm going to just adjust

16:40

this down tiny bit shrink

16:46

it and then this is where you know if

16:48

you're doing holiday cards this year or

16:50

you're maybe a little bit behind the

16:51

eightball on it this is a great way to

16:53

just kind of knock out building your

16:55

updates sending it off to everybody and

16:57

just do it with an exp Express you don't

16:58

have to be a designer your cards are

17:00

going to look a lot better than you know

17:02

99% of people's and you'll have

17:04

handwriting that's legible cuz you're

17:05

using a type face that you love maybe

17:07

it's comic

17:09

Papyrus

17:12

maybe all right

17:17

uh so in this section you would write

17:21

you know warm wishes this is us we're

17:23

having such a great time and

17:25

then you know our life is awesome isn't

17:28

that what people do for holiday

17:31

cards and then we'll use this image here

17:34

and then boom done took two seconds I

17:38

mean obviously it's going to take you

17:39

more time to write what you know has

17:41

been happening in your

17:43

life or you can just be like haha warm

17:47

wishes great done all right so that's

17:49

front and back right chill that's super

17:51

chill I don't know kids are on Instagram

17:53

these days so what we're going to do

17:54

we're going to duplicate this again and

17:56

going be like boom all right cool that's

17:59

a that flyer size we don't need that for

18:01

an Instagram piece and so what we're

18:03

going to do is make an Instagram Square

18:05

size instead of mailing it who's got

18:07

money for you

18:10

know paying to mail with stamps stamps

18:12

are

18:13

expensive all right so if you're if

18:15

you're like me and stamps are expensive

18:17

and you want to just post it on socials

18:20

here you go boom we've got a square crop

18:23

happening here and we're just going to

18:24

blow up the backside of this uh card and

18:28

we're just make it a square boom we got

18:30

this image here bada bing bada

18:34

boom and then we're going to keep that

18:37

bottom image off the bottom rails just

18:40

so that you know any UI issues we have

18:42

are not getting

18:45

covered and then I'm going to make this

18:48

also red whoa not the background

18:51

image I me this

18:56

color perfect and then we're going to

18:59

move

19:04

that all right I'm going move that here

19:07

here

19:10

boom

19:13

boom all right that's warm wishes easy

19:15

peasy that's one post all right so we're

19:18

going to do the same thing on the other

19:20

page let me go to the first

19:22

page so if you want to you know extend

19:25

your your content life cycle for be just

19:28

you know the printed material that

19:30

you're doing and you need to make

19:31

multiple social posts you can do this as

19:33

a carousel if you want uh what we're

19:35

going to do is go to resize and then

19:37

we're going to

19:38

create uh the square post

19:42

again 1080 by 1080 we're going to uncrop

19:47

that I'm going to just slide this up and

19:50

then I'm going to just adjust these just

19:52

take up a little bit more horizontal

19:55

space boom and just change out these

19:58

colors real

20:03

quick

20:05

boom and

20:12

boom all right so there we got so we got

20:14

happy holidays from the Henderson we're

20:16

going to

20:17

actually scooch these over a little bit

20:21

I want this uh combo this ornament

20:26

to be a little bit bigger and in the

20:30

center boom and then we have some

20:34

additional elements that are just kind

20:35

of like floating

20:37

so cool I think that's feeling pretty

20:39

good just G

20:41

to Boom space him out a little bit more

20:44

cool there you go you've now taken that

20:47

fer that you designed and then you've

20:49

streamlined it and you made it into two

20:50

different sizes if you wanted to you can

20:52

also do this again you know as a story a

20:55

Tik Tok reel you know you can make it a

20:57

YouTube thumbnail that's what you're

20:58

doing as well maybe you're doing like a

20:59

vlog at home and you want to cover that

21:02

as well you can also go in and start

21:04

scheduling this stuff out um which is

21:07

awesome let me go into maybe we'll do

21:10

like another post really really quickly

21:14

templates no I don't want to do another

21:16

template because if I do another

21:17

template I'll have to

21:19

restart uh let's do a story let's just

21:21

resize another thing real

21:24

quick uh

21:26

duplicate and then we can just change

21:29

this up oh the other thing you can

21:32

do go in here and do

21:37

it animation if we want to we can start

21:42

animating things so let's see I'll

21:46

do I like this and this I don't want I

21:52

don't want the or I want the like

21:54

ornament to stay so do animation in and

21:57

we'll do

21:59

pop and then let's see

22:04

here

22:06

boom I'll shorten that duration and

22:10

then uh I'll do breathe actually that

22:13

could be really nice

22:16

intensity all

22:21

right uh let's slow it down a tiny bit

22:24

so right here all I'm doing is did an

22:26

intro in we got an anim for breathe and

22:29

then we're going to do an out as well

22:32

maybe a

22:39

flicker I don't think we want to animate

22:42

out let's just keep it breathing all

22:44

right so let's see what this animation

22:45

would look

22:50

like yeah it's cute I need to change up

22:56

the the

22:58

breath a little bit more just so it's a

23:00

little bit more noticeable I think so

23:01

we're going to go in here go back to the

23:03

breath oh personality we can do

23:05

energetic let's see what energetic

23:09

breathe

23:15

oh all right let's do breathe

23:20

duration and then

23:23

intensity cool let's try it

23:26

again so we got some breathing animation

23:29

going on so it kind of feels like the

23:31

stars are twinkling which I think is

23:36

rad yeah that's cute I think that's a

23:38

great way like look at that it took us

23:40

no time at all you've got an animated

23:42

social asset for your post I'll probably

23:44

Riff on this and post it for my own

23:47

socials just because I think it's great

23:48

it's works really easy and as media Rich

23:51

so you got that video that video content

23:53

is going to perform really well for you

23:54

on your Instagram so that's awesome I

23:57

think you you know within 30 minutes

23:59

you've got 1 2 3 4 five five different

24:03

things you can start posting online or

24:06

physically IRL uh oops I don't need a

24:08

bingo KN uh you can also go in like I

24:11

showed you earlier you can go in and

24:13

start doing the text effects you can

24:15

start playing with like uh

24:19

ice

24:21

winter like snow maybe even snow could

24:24

be a good one on there you can start

24:25

seeing how like the text effects will

24:27

start to play on that tight face for you

24:29

as well uh snow

24:34

blizard cold lots of very random words

24:40

that are all in the same wheelhouse to

24:41

see what we can get uh we can also

24:43

change it from realistic to like oh

24:46

that's actually really nice that's a

24:48

really good one all right that prompt if

24:51

you want it is ice winter snow blizzard

24:54

cold uh very very frigid very very

24:56

chilly um looks perfect on this type

24:59

face actually it's really really good um

25:02

so yeah type in whatever you want in

25:03

this area you can change it up you know

25:06

be like Alex that's me um it it'll work

25:11

really well you download that PNG as a

25:13

transparency and then throw it into any

25:14

of your design assets um this is really

25:17

killer so really really pumped on that

25:20

again use these features go to express

25:22

check it out text to image Genera to

25:24

fill text to template and text effects

25:27

are

25:28

amazing uh yeah IM aorn says fast and

25:31

easy it's awesome so thank you everybody

25:33

for hanging out with me today I

25:35

appreciate it hopefully this helps kind

25:36

of take some of that creative burden off

25:38

your plate for this holiday season and

25:40

you can hit 2024 uh like the rock stars

25:43

that you all are so thank you everybody

25:45

I appreciate you thank you we'll see

25:48

yall soon

25:56

bye-bye

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