- [Illustrator] In this movie, I'll introduce you
to the Libraries panel, which allows you to collect paths
and other graphic and text objects
as well as fill and stroke colors, color themes,
and character and paragraph styles.
And then you can turn around and share those items
with other compatible Creative Cloud applications
that are running on your machine,
and you can share them with other folks
who you're working with either locally or remotely.
Now as with all the panels, you get to the Libraries panel
by going up to the Window menu, and in this case,
choosing the Libraries command.
Now I want you to notice for space reasons on screen here,
I've gone ahead and grouped my Libraries panel
along with Layers, Appearance, and Artboards.
I also want you to see out here in the document window
that we have two flat-looking shadows,
one in the background, and then another in the foreground.
Now, they're going to look snazzier in the future, but for now,
I just want to add them to my default library,
and I'm going to start things off with a background shadow.
So I'll click on it with the black arrow tool
and then I'll drag it and drop it into the Libraries panel,
and you can tell the operation is going to work
because the interior of the panel darkens
and you see a plus sign.
All right, so I'll just go ahead and drag that guy
into place.
Notice that it's categorized as a graphic,
and if I hover over the thumbnail,
I can see that it was created in Adobe Illustrator,
which is very useful,
especially when you're compiling graphics
from different applications, so that way,
if I were in InDesign or Photoshop,
I would know where this specific graphic came from.
Problem is, it doesn't have a meaningful name.
It's just called Artwork 1.
So I'll give it slightly more meaning
by calling it Shadow 1 instead.
Now you can avoid that step if you want
by first naming the item in the Layers panel,
and so I'll go ahead and switch back to that panel,
and I'll twirl open the Shadows layer right there.
Notice in all we have three items,
two freeform path outlines and a rectangle.
The top path represents the foreground shadow.
So I'll just go ahead and double-click on its name
and I'll call it Shadow 2,
and then I'll switch back to the Libraries panel,
and I'll click on that shadow to select it,
and then I'll drag and drop it into the panel as well,
and this time, it comes in automatically named
after the item in the Layers panel.
All right, now I want to show you a different way of working
so I want to undo that operation, but you can't undo it
by going up to the Edit menu and choosing the Undo command.
Notice that the command reads Undo Layer Rename,
and what that's telling us is that we're going to undo the fact
that we've renamed that one path Shadow 2,
which is not what I want to do.
So I'm just going to escape out.
Instead, if you decide you don't want to add the item
after all, then you click on it to select it
and notice the difference, by the way,
between a selected and a deselected item
here inside the Libraries panel.
So if I were to click on Shadow 1, its name would darken up.
All right, but I'm going to click on Shadow 2
and then I'll drop down to the little trash icon
in the bottom right corner of the panel and click on it.
Now I want you to take a quick look here.
For just a moment, we're going to see an Undo button,
which will allow you to undo that deletion
but it will ultimately fade away.
Now it's very possible that you might change your mind
after the Undo disappears.
I'll show you how that works later, but for now,
I'm going to show you that other way to add Shadow 2
to the library, and that's to go ahead
and click on the little plus sign in the bottom left corner
of the Libraries panel, at which point,
I'll see a popup menu that offers
not only to save the graphic but its fill color as well.
The reason I'm not seeing stroke color
is because this path doesn't have a stroke,
and so I'll leave both of those checkboxes turned on,
and I'll click the Add button, and you can see
that we get the graphic Shadow 2 as well as the color,
which is automatically named after its RGB hex value
but when you hover over it,
you can see the standard RGB values as well.
All right, now I want to add this big word DESIGN
to the library, so I'll go ahead and click on it.
Notice that I've grouped these path outlines in advance,
and you can tell that's the case by the appearance
of the word Group on the far left side of the panel,
and so I'll go ahead and add these guys as well
by clicking on the plus sign in the bottom left corner
of the panel, and this time Illustrator offers not only
to save the graphic but also the stroke color,
and that's because all the letters share that same stroke.
They don't share a common fill.
And so I'll go ahead and leave both the checkboxes turned on
and click Add and once again we're seeing both a new graphic
and a new color, and I want you to see that the graphic
has been automatically named Design because I took the time
to name that group inside the Layers panel.
Okay, now let's say I want to select all the path outlines
that make up the blocks.
In that case, I'll switch back to the Layers panel
and I'll twirl closed the Shadows layer,
and I'll just click in the top right corner
of that Blocks layer, and that will select everything
on the layer after which point, I'll shift-click
on the word DESIGN to deselect it, and that will leave me
with all of the blocks.
Now it's worth noting that these items
are not grouped together.
They're just a bunch of loose path outlines.
That doesn't matter.
You can still add them as one object
inside the Libraries panel by first switching to it
and then once again clicking on the plus sign,
at which point, you'll see that you can save the graphic
as well as the fill and stroke colors.
Now this time around, we're being offered a white fill.
I'm not sure why that is, but I'm going to turn both the fill
and stroke off because we don't need them,
and I click on the word Add, and we get a new item
in the Graphics section right here.
It's called Artwork 1 because I didn't name
any of these path outlines,
and they're not actually an organized collection,
and so I'll just go ahead and double-click on Artwork 1
and I'll call this items Blocks and then press the enter key
or the return key on the Mac.
All right, now I want you to notice that these color items
are just colors.
They're not specifically fill or stroke attributes,
but they are colors that you can use
across multiple applications,
just as you can use these illustrations
over multiple applications as well.
And that friends is my introduction to the Libraries panel
which works not only in Illustrator but also Photoshop
and InDesign.