Transcript
0:00 Ever wish you had an assistant built right into Adobe InDesign to walk you through steps or help streamline your design process? Well, now you do. With the new AI Assistant integration, currently available in beta, you can chat with your document to get quick answers or help with repetitive tasks to save time. In this tutorial, we'll go over four examples of how to use the AI Assistant. We'll go over how to ask for help as a beginner, create a paragraph style from a text prompt, generate captions from image metadata, and format text all while staying in control of your design.
0:38 Let's jump in and take a closer look. Before we get started, it's important to note that I'm working on the beta version of InDesign. To access this, make your way over to the Creative Cloud desktop app, click on the apps button from the left side menu, click on beta, scroll down until you see InDesign, download the beta app to follow along in this tutorial. Now, I'm working on a three-page document for a slide deck presentation, and I want to use the AI Assistant to help me with some simple tasks. Firstly, to access the AI Assistant, make your way up to window, and then choose AI Assistant. You can see that mine is already docked on the right side, and yours should be too when you launch the InDesign beta app. If I minimize the AI Assistant panel for a moment, you'll also notice a quick action icon located at the top of the screen. Click that to launch the AI Assistant panel. Now, the AI Assistant built into InDesign helps you with beginner, intermediate, or even advanced tasks.
1:48 For example, if I were new to InDesign, I could ask the AI Assistant how to place an image in a frame. I'll add that text prompt in the prompt box. How do you place an image in a frame? I'll click the submit button and that takes just a few moments to generate a response. You can see that the AI assistant quickly generates a response for me on how to place an image into an existing frame, which I already have here, the background image on the first page. So, I'll select it, go up to file and place, just as it's telling me to.
2:25 Choose my image, which I have here, an Adobe Stock image, and click open, and you can see that the image has been placed. That's straightforward when you need help with basic tasks. Next, let's use the AI assistant to create a paragraph style with a text prompt. I'll make my way over to page two in this document, and if I minimize the AI assistant for a second, you'll see that I have four images here. And under these four images, I'd like to add captions.
2:55 Each one of these images has metadata in the description that will become the caption in this example. Now, before we create those captions, I want the AI assistant to help me with creating a paragraph style to apply to these captions. So, once again, I'll click the AI assistant panel and in the prompt box, I'll add my prompt. Create a paragraph style using the Gotham font. If you don't have the Gotham font, I've linked it in the description below.
3:25 However, you can also use the font of your choice. The point size should be 22 and the letting or line spacing is 26 and I want the color to be white. Once I'm satisfied with that prompt, go ahead and click submit to submit the prompt. And again, that'll take just a few moments for the AI assistant to generate a result for me. And just like that, the AI assistant creates the paragraph style with the attributes specified in the prompt details.
3:55 Have a look. It says, "I created a paragraph style named Gotham 22/26 white using the Gotham font. It's 22 point font size, 26 point letting with a white fill color." If I open the paragraph styles panel, you can see it here. Gotham 22/26 white. If I click the title on this page and click Gotham 22 26 white, you could see it did in fact create the paragraph style. I'll press command Z on a Mac, that's control Z on Windows, to go back to the original size.
4:29 Now that we've set up the paragraph style, let's use the AI assistant to pull metadata from four separate images and create captions in a layout. Once again, I'll click the AI assistant panel, go down to the prompt box, and I'll paste in my next prompt. It says, "Pull the description in the metadata to create captions on all the images on page two." This is page two. "Place the captions under each of the image frames. Apply the Gotham 22/26 white style to the text." I'll click on submit once again, and after a few moments, you'll see the captions appear under each image pulling the description from the metadata. And just like that, you'll see that the AI assistant place separate text frames with all the captions on the page. Now, how cool is this? It says, "I pulled the description metadata from the placed images on page two and created four captions, each positioned directly under its image frame. I also applied the Gotham 22/26 white paragraph style to all the caption text." Now, the one thing it didn't do is fit the frame to the content. I'll press W on my keyboard, and you'll see that there is overset text. Select all four text frames, and while holding option command on your keyboard, press C to fit the frames to the content. That's alt control C if you're on Windows. I'll press W again, and really, in just a few steps, we used the AI assistant to create a paragraph style, ask it to pull metadata from images to generate captions, and then apply that paragraph style to the captions. And remember, the AI assistant is just that, your assistant. You're still the designer, which means you could still make minor tweaks such as moving the captions away from the images if they're too close, like in this case.
6:23 You can see I've selected all four of the captions and move them down to create some space between the captions and the images. In this last example, let's go over how to use the AI assistant to apply paragraph formatting to text in a layout. I'll make my way to page three, and I have some text in a text frame where I want to add a bulleted list with some paragraph formatting. With the frame selected, I'll make my way back up to the AI assistant, and I'm going to add my fourth and final text prompt here.
6:55 In this example, I want to ask the AI assistant to create a bulleted list to the text frame selected. Make the left indent 38 pixels, make the first line indent minus 38 pixels. Next, I'll click the submit button, and watch as the AI assistant creates that bulleted list for me. The AI assistant sends a confirmation message that it created the bulleted list and seamlessly applied the paragraph formatting settings. And there you have it, a quick look at how the new AI assistant in Adobe InDesign can help support your workflow.
7:32 Since this feature is still currently in beta, I'm excited to see how it continues to evolve and help you work smarter. If you found this tutorial helpful, be sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and let me know in the comments how you'd use the AI assistant in your own InDesign projects. Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.