Transcript
0:00 Creating animated social media content doesn't always have to require advanced motion design applications. In this master class, I'll walk you through a complete workflow on how to use the power combo of InDesign and Adobe Express to create animated social media assets from start to finish. Follow along as we'll create the social media post in InDesign, export it directly to Express, and then use animation tools to bring the post to life. As an added tip, I'll show you a quick Photoshop technique for separating the main subject from the background before bringing the image into InDesign.
0:37 I can't wait to show you this workflow, so let's dive in and get started. Let's start things off by creating the document for our social media post here in Adobe InDesign. I'll click on new file, and from the new document window, click on the web tab up top, and let's set the width to 1080. Press your tab key a couple times, and we'll make the height also 1080. Now, we only want one page because we're only going to be working on the one social media post here, and let's set the margins to 82.
1:14 So, I'll type in 82, press your tab key. You can see that all four values will be changed to 82 as long as you have the chain linked on. So, we set the values all to 82 pixels. Now, these values will vary based on the size you choose to start with, but for this square post, it'll work great. Once we have all those settings in place, go ahead and click create to create the document. Now, before we start designing the square post here in InDesign, let's go over how to edit the image in Photoshop to separate the main subject from the background.
1:49 I've opened an image here in Photoshop of a female data analyst looking at a laptop, and the first thing I want to do is create another copy of this. So, I'll go to my layers panel and I'll press command J on a Mac. That's control J on Windows to create another copy of the layer. Now, I'm going to rename this top layer subject. And I'm going to leave the background layer as background. Now, before we cut out the subject, I want to remove the subject from the background layer. So, I'll hide the subject layer and for this we'll need to access the remove tool.
2:26 This can be accessed in the left panel and if I hover over this tool here, now by default it might be set to spot healing brush tool. If that's the case, click and hold and then choose remove tool. Now, just ensure you're working on the background layer when you're applying the edits to this image. Now, basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint around the subject and the remove tool will do all the work for me. This is an AI-powered tool that will remove the subject and naturally blend the background together. Let me just minimize the layers panel here and I'll start around her head and work my way around just like so. And it doesn't have to be perfect to start.
3:09 We're just going to paint around the subject and get around the laptop and we're going to go around the entire body. So, we're going to get that cord and then go all the way down here and then move make our way around around her hair and we're just basically going to connect both points together. This will fill in the area and detect the subject. After a few moments, Adobe Firefly inside of Photoshop will work its magic and automatically remove the subject from the scene.
3:41 And just like that, you could see that the subject was removed from the image and Photoshop detected the background and added the missing pixels. So, if I go back to my layers panel, I can click on and you can see the subject layer is still there. So, I still have the subject intact. However, in this top layer subject, I'm going to click on the move tool. And in the contextual task bar, if you don't see the contextual task bar, this can be accessed by going up to window and then choosing contextual task bar.
4:13 In the contextual task bar, I'm going to click select subject. This will create a selection around the subject. And now I'm going to add a layer mask. To do this, click on this icon here in the contextual task bar to create a layer mask. Now, have a look. There's the layer with the subject and there's the layer without the subject. With without. Now, for this case, make sure that all the layers are turned on and let's save this. Command or control S.
4:46 I'll save this as data analyst and then click save. Now that the image is saved, let's go back to InDesign and place it in the social media post. I'm back in InDesign now and the first step is adding the main artwork we just saved from Photoshop. Now, we'll be adding that PSD and to do that, make your way up to file and then choose place. Select the PSD. Here it is here, data analyst.psd, and click open.
5:16 Here it is in my loaded cursor. Now, I don't advise just clicking and dropping it in. First, it'll probably be too large and then you'll have to scale it down and resize it. The easier way is hold your shift key down and in the top left-hand corner, click and drag the size you want. Holding shift gives you more control when you're resizing or when you're creating that frame. So, I'm going to drag to the bottom right and then release. Now, Now want to increase the content size. So, to do this, click on the content grabber. That's the donut here when you hover over the image. And the easiest way of resizing an image is using the shortcut option command, that's alt control on Windows, and your greater than key on your keyboard.
6:05 So, I want to increase this quite significantly. Something like that will work. And then just position it where you want. Something like that. I might move it to the right just a bit. I think that will work. So, I'll click away. And now I'm happy. Actually, I see a little bit of white space up top, so I'll have to bring that up a bit. Okay, now I can click away. And that's a good crop. Now, if I go to my layers panel, have a look here. I'll click layer one, and there is the data analyst image, the PSD that I just added.
6:35 I'm going to click on that image, command or control C to copy it, and then shift option command V to paste in place. That's shift alt control V on Windows. Now I have two versions of that image. With the top version selected, I'm going to right click it, go to object layer options, and I'm going to hide the background. Object layer options allows you to control the layers from the Photoshop document right here in InDesign, which is really, really cool.
7:08 So, I've turned off the background layer here, and now I can click okay. I'll click on the bottom version, the bottom layer. Now, it's important to maybe lock this top one, so you're not right clicking that one. With the bottom layer selected, I'm going to right click that and go to object layer options again. And in this case, I want to hide the subject, and I only want the background. So, if I click okay, let me show you how that looks.
7:36 Remember, we separated the subject from the background. So, if I hide this top layer, the subject will be hidden. If I bring back the subject and hide the background, the background will be hidden. So, this is a cool way of controlling the layers right here in Adobe InDesign. Now, actually let me unlock the top layer. I'm going to select both images together and I'm going to bring the bottoms up. And I want the height of both to be about 832.
8:08 Remember, we're going to be adding some content down below. Now, I can click away and we can start adding our other content. Now, I always do recommend locking the top layer and let's add the text first. We'll add our title. For this, I'm going to click on the type tool. And I'm going to draw out a frame that goes margin to margin. And I'm going to add my text. And this will say protect your business.
8:38 I'm going to command A to select all. And the font that I'll be using for the title is called Rift. It's an Adobe font. This will be Rift Bold. And I'll leave a link in the description if you want to install Rift to follow along step-by-step here. I'm going to make the point size. This will be quite large, so 152. I'll press tab on my keyboard and let's make the letting or line spacing 140.
9:10 Now, I'll click on my selection tool and then double-click the bottom center handle to make the frame fit the text. I'm going to bring it up. I'm just moving it up with my up arrow key. I'll select all the text, go to my swatches panel, and let's make this white so you can read it better against the background. Now, we'll improve that even more shortly. Actually, I want to reduce the space, the line spacing even more. So, a quick way of doing that is option on a Mac, alt on Windows, and your up arrow key.
9:44 And you can also reduce the tracking, option or alt on Windows, and left arrow key. Maybe -40 looks good. Go back to my selection tool, double-click to make the frame fit the text, and then I'll just move it down just a little bit there. Next, let's add the shape that will go between the subject and the background. For this, we'll use the rectangle frame tool. I'll click on that. And I'll start in the top left and work my way down. Actually, want a little bit wider than that. So, I'll press V to go back to my selection tool, and let's make it a little bit wider, maybe something like 150. We'll try like something like that.
10:28 Yeah, that looks good. And I'm going to create a swatch color. If I go to my swatches panel, I'm going to create a blue color to apply to this. In the swatches panel, click on the swatches option, and let's choose new color swatch. Choose the color mode and switch it to RGB since we're working on a web version. And I have the RGB values here. It'll be 64, 179, 245. I'll click okay. And now I have my blue color.
11:02 Click on the selection tool. I already have mine selected. Hold option and drag another version. Let's rotate it 90°. Hold your shift key while you're rotating. And this will go up top. And then we're going to drag the center right to the edge of the page. Now, with this vertical one, let's bring the top center down to the bottom of that first rectangle. So, it should look something like this. Now, let's go ahead and group these two shapes together. I'm going to click on the top, hold shift, click on the second, and do command G to group. Now, if I go back to my layers panel, here it is here. It's called group. That's fine. I'm just going to sandwich it between the two data analyst PSDs.
11:52 Now, I want to add a gradient to this shape with the brand colors for this fictional company. If I go back to my swatches panel, I'm going to create another swatch here. Actually, let me click away first, so I'm not applying that swatch to the shape. I'm going to go back to the swatch options and click new color swatch. And we'll create a green color in this case. So, let's add the values 40, press your tab key, 220, tab, and 172.
12:25 There's the green color there. And I'll click okay. Now, I want to create a gradient swatch and apply it to that shape, the grouped shape. So, I'm going to click on that, and I'm going to go to the swatch options again. And this time, I'll choose new gradient swatch. I want the type to be linear, so that's just fine. But, let's rename the swatch to something like SM social media post gradient.
12:55 You can call it whatever you want, but in this case, I'm going to call it that. And next, I'm going to click on the first stop in the gradient ramp. That's the white color here. And the stop color, let's change it to swatches. I'm going to change that, or I'm going to set it to the blue color that I created. I'm going to click on the black stop. And the black stop will be the green color that I created. So, we have a nice transition here from blue to green.
13:22 So, I'll click okay. And when I do, that'll be applied to that shape. Now, it doesn't look great. To fix this, we can use the gradient swatch tool. This gives us a little bit more control when we're setting up the direction of the gradient. Let me show you how this works. First, I'm going to press W on my keyboard so you can see the gradient being applied better. And the gradient swatch tool is in your tools panel. It's right here. Gradient swatch tool or G on your keyboard as a shortcut. I'm going to click on that.
13:56 And I'm going to start in the top left and work my way down diagonally. Now, you want shorter segments. Shorter segments will give you a better result. Let me show you. I'm going to do a short segment. That's not bad. Maybe a short segment here. I can also start from the bottom right and work my way up. Let's try that. No, I want to start it from blue to green. And you can maybe even go a little bit more.
14:23 I think that is the best result. I really like that. So, let's stick with that result right now. I also want to round off the top left corner of the shape. So, I'm going to go back to my selection tool, click away, then double-click to only click this top shape. Click on this yellow rectangle here or this yellow square in the bottom right-hand corner of that shape. This allows you to round off all corners, but if you hold shift and only drag the top left downwards, sorry, if you click and drag down, that will round off the top left corner. Now, I can click away and you can see my shape has been complete.
15:05 Now, the problem here is you can't really read the text well against that shape, as well as the laptop and the woman's shirt. To address this, we'll create a gradient feather effect. To do this, click on the rectangle frame tool again, and let's create a shape that goes from the edge of the page on the left to the edge of the page on the right, and we're going to make this black. Now, obviously that doesn't look good. So, let's click on our selection tool again, and in the properties panel, under appearance, you'll see this effects icon here. Let's go ahead and click that.
15:44 And this is where we'll add a gradient feather. So, go ahead and click gradient feather. Now, before finalizing anything, we'll have to change the angle because right now the gradient is going from left to right, and we want it to go from the bottom to the top. So, I'm going to change the angle to 90°, press tab, and you can see now the gradient is starting from the bottom and working its way up. So, that's okay al- already. If you want to darken it a little bit more, I can move this top slider to the right a little bit. I think I'm happy with that. So, I'll click okay to finalize that. And then I'll go to my layers panel, and I'll move this again in between the two images.
16:31 So, something like that. And we do want it to go over the grouped shape, which makes it look a little bit better as well. If I moved it below the shape, you could see you'll still run into that problem. So, move it in between both images, but above the grouped shape. I'll put my guides back on by pressing W on my keyboard, and I'm going to create another text frame down below starting on the left side. This is going to go over two lines, so I'm going to make it a little bit deeper. I have some text for this frame. I'll just grab that, and I'll copy it here, and I'll paste it right here inside of this frame.
17:11 Now, the text or font for this we'll be using is Poppins. First, let's make it 40 points so you could see it better. I'll type in 40 and we'll make the letting 50. And from the font picker, I'm just going to type in here Poppins. And in this case, we'll use Poppins semi-bold. I'm also going to turn off the hyphenation. So, if I go to my properties panel and I scroll to the bottom, you have this option here where it's checked on where it says hyphenate, let's uncheck that to make cyber security go over the second line. Now, if I click on my selection tool again, here's a little trick. Hold option command and press letter C to make the text frame fit the text.
17:57 And now, let's create the button shape. For this, again, I like to use the rectangle frame tool and I'm going to create a rectangle in the bottom right-hand corner. And for this, if I go to my CC Libraries, I'll go to color themes, I have a color here that I like, right there, color fill. I'll go back to my properties panel. I'll press V on my keyboard and then click that yellow square. And in this case, I want to round off all the corners, so I'll just drag them all inwards.
18:33 I could probably make this a little bit higher. I'll click on my copy here, hold my alt or option key if you're on Windows, and drag to make another copy. And in all caps, I'm going to type get started. Command A to select all. Go to your swatches panel and let's make the fill color white. I'm also going to center this to that frame, so shift command C. I'm going to go back to my selection tool. Double-click on any of the corner handles to make the text frame fit. And I'm going to bring it above that shape and then release. To bring it to the front, shift, command, and right square bracket. Now, let's have a look. If I click away and press W. Now, Poppins is a font that I want to change the baseline here. You could see the text is sitting at the bottom. So, if I click on that and then hold option, that's alt on Windows, and double click.
19:36 Go to baseline options right up here and change the offset from ascent to cap height. And I can get a preview of that. Just ensure that your preview box is checked on. You can see if I toggle the option on and off, the text is changing in real time. So, once I'm happy, I'll click okay. And now I can double click that bottom center handle and adjust the frame accordingly. So, I'm going to actually group the button, shape, and the text. Select both of them together, command G to group them together. With it still selected, hold shift and click on the copy. And in the properties panel, let's align the vertical centers.
20:17 It looks like they're already aligned, so that looks good. I'll press W on my keyboard. I'll select both of them together and they could actually go down a little bit here just to kind of split the difference. Now, before I export this to Adobe Express, of course, it's important to save this and give it a proper name. You could see I haven't saved to this point, so I'm going to use command S. And let's rename this cyber security SM post. And then I'll just click save.
20:50 Now that the social media post is all set, let's export it to Adobe Express directly from InDesign. This can be done by going up to file and then choosing export to Adobe Express. That'll take just a few moments to export, but once it's done, let's jump over to Express and start adding the animation to bring this static design to life. The social media post has been uploaded to Express, and now I'd like to apply four animations in total to add some visual appeal.
21:23 Now, before I add those animations, have a look on the right side of my workspace. This icon here is your layers panel. So, this will show all the layers from the InDesign document, and those carry over as well. Now, the reason I'm showing you this is because often times when you're applying the animation, if I am trying to click on that shape, you'll see that the image here is in the foreground, so I can't really click it here unless I start moving objects around, and of course, I don't want to do that. So, it's easier to access that object from the layers panel. If I click on this shape, you'll see that now I have it selected, and I would be able to add my animation from here. Now, I'll click away, and we'll start with the image first. That's pretty simple because it's in the foreground, so I'll click on it once, and from the floating menu up top here, I'll click on edit.
22:18 Then, I'll choose animation. And here, you have multiple animations with three sequence options: in animation, loop animation, and out animation. For this tutorial, we'll focus on in and loop. You'll also notice a one-stop-shop button to animate everything in your design. This is powered by Adobe Firefly, and it's an AI-powered tool. However, in this tutorial, we'll be adding our own custom animations. With the image selected, I'm going to scroll down, and if I hover over any of these animations, you'll get a preview of how it would look like.
22:58 Now, in this example, I want to choose slide, so I'll hover over slide, and I'll click on it to select it. And when you click on it, you'll see another icon here to edit the options. So, I'll click that icon, and you'll see another window appear. You'll be able to set the duration. By default, it'll be 1 second, and we'll just leave it at 1 second is fine. You can also choose the personality. Think of this as the easing of your animation. So, you have five options here.
23:28 Soft, smooth. There's also strong, which is the default in this case. So, you can choose one that you like and works best for your example. I think in this case, I will stick on the strong option. You also have the option to have a fade in effect as the animation plays out. I do like that subtle fade when it's coming in, so I will leave that checked on. I can also edit the direction. So, currently, it's coming in from the left to the right. However, for more natural look, I want it to come in from the right to the left. That's the way she's facing, and it just looks a lot better.
24:10 And finally, you can also check start outside the page. So, in other words, I can have this animation start from the outside of the page and animate in, and I think that looks really good. So, I'm going to leave all the settings like that, and then click away when I'm happy. Next, we'll animate that shape. So, remember, let's access this from the layers panel. I'll go ahead and click that grouped shape. And in the animation panel, I'm going to choose slide once again.
24:41 I'll click on the edit options. The duration will be 1 second. We'll leave it on 1 second. The personality, to match the consistency of the subject animation, I'll leave it on strong. I'll also leave the fade option on. And in this case I do want the direction to be left to right. However, I do also want to choose start outside page. So now I can click away and if I click the preview button here in the animation panel, you'll notice that you can see the animation play out in real time.
25:16 And you can see they come in at the same time. We'll be able to edit those in just a few moments. Next, let's animate the text. So the title here, protect your business. Again, that's easy to access because it's at the top of the layer stack. And much like the shape and the subject, if I hover over some of these options here, you'll get a preview of how that will look. So you have fade, flicker, typewriter.
25:41 And you can see you can animate it by the word. Or you can animate by the character. Currently, it's being animated by the character. So the one I want, if I scroll down, we could try slide here as well. Or maybe drift. Yeah, let's go with drift in this case. Again, I'll click on it and then I'll click on the options icon. Now currently the duration is 2.2 seconds. I'm going to shorten that just a bit. Let's try 1 and 1/2. Actually, it'd probably be easier if I just type it in. 1.5.
26:17 Press my tab key. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. So here we can choose by the character, which is basically what is happening. You can also do by word. Or you could do by line. I do like the line option, so let's leave it on line. We could change the personality to maybe something like smooth. No, that's not what I like. Let's try loud. I do like energetic, so let's keep it on energetic.
26:48 Much like the other options, let's leave the fade option checked on and I do want the direction to be from left to right and I won't start it on the outside of the page here. I think it looked better when we didn't do it that way. Great. So we have three of the four animations set up here. And next let's animate the button to loop. So if I click on the button, you can see this is already a grouped object. So I can go up to animation.
27:18 And in this case, instead of in, let's choose loop. And loop is a good way of grabbing someone's attention. So in other words, we're adding emphasis to this button to bring people's attention to it and perhaps have more people click on it. So the one that I like to use is pulse. I'll click on pulse. Now that's a pretty intense pulse there that you're seeing. So I want to make it more subtle. I'll click on the options icon again and I'll reduce the speed to maybe 40 or let's try 40.
27:54 Let's see how that looks. That's better and I don't want the intensity to be so intense if that makes sense. I'm going to bring that down as well, maybe 10. Let's try 10. You can see how that's a lot more subtle and not so in your face. So I do like that a lot better. So if I click away and then click my preview button, you'll notice that all the animations are coming in at the same time.
28:21 And it's really hard to capture. Let me play it again. If I click preview, everything's just coming in all at once. Well, here in Express, you can actually edit the pacing of the animations and that can be done here. You'll see a button at the bottom left of this screen that says edit timeline. I'll go ahead and click that. And you'll see all the layers are here as well. If I click on them, they'll actually highlight right on the page. So it takes the guesswork out. So, here's the image, and let's just say we want the image to come in just a little bit after the shape.
28:54 Basically, hover over the left side and drag to the right. So, let me make it maybe 4 and 1/2 and see how that looks. You can see if I scrub through the timeline, the shape comes in followed by the subject. Good. So, once the subject is fully animated, right about there, maybe that's when I want the text to come in. So, I'll click on protect your business. And I will bring that to the right until I get to the playhead, right about there. Let's see how that looks.
29:31 If I play that back, actually, I'm just scrubbing through, so the shape comes in, then the subject, then the text. And perhaps the text can come in a little bit later, so maybe I'll make it something maybe right there. I'll bring it a little bit more. And if I play that at full speed, let's see how that looks. I'll play it 1 2 3. Perfect. I like the pacing there. And you'll see that the the actual button will automatically pulse from the beginning.
30:01 You can see if I play the animation, the button is pulsating ever so subtly, and it's just a nice added touch. So, I'm quite pleased overall. Now, to exit the timeline, you'll see an arrowhead here located in the upper right-hand corner of the timeline. Just click on it to close it. That will bring you back to the main screen. You get a better view. And if you want to play it in this view, press the play button.
30:28 And you can preview the animation without the timeline. Now, once you have your animation, you can actually download it in two ways, either as an animated GIF or as a short clip, an MP4. In the upper right-hand corner, click on download. And then in the file format, you could choose from MP4, best for video, audio, and animations. So, if you were sharing this on a social media platform, you could download an MP4. If I click this, you also have the option to download a GIF. This is best for animations. I think in this case, I'll choose MP4.
31:10 I'll leave the video resolution to original size, which is 1080 by 1080. I'll click download, and let's take a final look at the animation in MP4 format. I've downloaded the MP4, and let's have a final look at the social media post. You'll see that the animation we added in Express just brings our static design to life and takes it to another level. And that's the complete workflow for taking a static social media design and bringing it to life with animation using InDesign and Express together.
31:46 Give it a try with your own projects the next time you're tasked with creating social media posts. If you found this masterclass helpful, give the video a like and subscribe to the channel for more Adobe design workflows and tutorials just like this. If you'd like to learn more about Adobe InDesign, then check out the playlist below. Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.