Research Tools and Services Discovery

Adobe XD is a powerful platform for creating user experiences using an iterative design process. In this course, strategic development manager Demian Borba introduces the design tools and workflows in Adobe XD. Learn how to set up an XD project for UX design, use artboards and grids to keep your project organized, and start working with the vector design tools. Find out how to access the official UI kits from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Then discover how to use power tools like Repeat Grid and symbols with the Assets panel, and leverage assets from other applications as well as Creative Cloud Libraries. By the end of the course, you should have everything you need to know to create your own web and mobile application designs with Adobe XD.

Losing confidence in an idea—even a spectacular one—is easy if it's communicated in an email or letter riddled with grammatical errors. In this course, Judy Steiner-Williams helps you review basic grammar rules and then focuses on more advanced grammar principles such as using correct words, locating incorrect grammar in sentences and paragraphs, and reviewing parts of speech, punctuation, and proper sentence structure.

In photography, a color-managed workflow makes it easier to obtain consistent-looking color in every phase of the process: when you're editing photos on screen, printing them on an inkjet printer, or having them printed by a commercial lab.

In this course, Joe Brady builds on his Color Management Fundamentals course, focusing on color-management issues of specific interest to photographers. After a review of digital-color concepts, the course explores creating color profiles for each device in the digital photography workflow, from monitor to printer, to camera. Joe demonstrates the tools and techniques behind color profiling, even covering tablets—ideal for photographers using iPads or Android tablets as wireless remote controls.

Sit down and strap in for an extended deep dive into the mysterious world of advanced color correction in Adobe Photoshop. This special installment of Photoshop Color Correction shows you the workflow, toolset, settings, and techniques you'll need to address advanced color challenges. Taz Tally covers how to quickly evaluate and adjust color using nondestructive editing tools and techniques and how to improve your workflow speed using keyboard shortcuts, preferences, and tool settings, and explains how grayscale, neutrals, and skin tone values play into color correction. Then you'll learn how to evaluate, measure, and correct color in different photographs, from landscapes to portraits, using Curves, adjustment layers, grayscale targets, layer masks, and Smart Filters. The last chapter details how to proof, sharpen, and export your corrected files.

Explore the latest Apple Watch update, watchOS 3. This short course reviews the new features and capabilities of watchOS, including the Dock-based interface, new watch faces, and the SOS feature for emergency calls. Author Nick Brazzi also takes a look at sharing activity and workout data with friends, and explores some of the other bundled apps, including Find My Friends, reminders, and messaging.

Hooks are key components of WordPress plugin development. There are two types: filters modify data and actions perform tasks. Gain a fundamental understanding of how these features work, and learn how to use the built-in action and filter hooks in WordPress to build your own plugins. In the first half of the course, instructor Carrie Dils reviews the plugin API and demonstrates the basics of actions and filters. Already familiar with these core concepts? Skip to chapter three, where she covers what you need to make your own hooks. Learn about load order and writing callback functions, and using third-party hooks. Last but not least, Carrie builds a demo plugin that shows practical real-world uses for actions and filters.

People who have visited your website have already demonstrated an interest in your product or service—even if they haven't made a purchase. By retargeting these visitors with carefully positioned ads, you can exponentially increase your conversion rates. Google refers to this process as remarketing. In this course, marketing consultant Adriaan Brits shows you how to set up an effective remarketing campaign with Google AdWords and Analytics. Discover how to build remarketing lists, link accounts, use remarketing tags, and target custom audiences. Plus, learn about more advanced solutions such as dynamic remarketing and remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA). Along the way, Adriaan introduces you to best practices and tips for optimizing your efforts, increasing ROI, and creating more efficient campaigns.

Looking for a compelling alternative to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW? Affinity Designer is a powerful and affordable vector-design application mixed with pixel-based texture and retouching tools—all in one easy-to-use interface. It was created with the professional-level features that any artist, designer, or illustrator needs to execute high-quality results.

Here Ronnie McBride introduces the workflows and tools required to get up to speed with this fast, powerful, and professional application. He shows how to work with workspaces in Affinity Designer, called personas; use the drawing tools; and create custom brushes. This course is designed to help artists feel more confident and become more proficient using Affinity Designer in their own work.

Learn how to create an animated shower scene for a product visualization inside Adobe After Effects. The complete scene features a chrome showerhead, water streams, steam, and a realistic background—all built in true 3D space with Element 3D, an AE plugin that makes it easy to build 3D objects and particle systems. Explore different shooting angles with the scene camera, and learn to add a depth-of-field camera. Discover how to completely automate the stream speed and thickness in a very natural looking way, all with sliding controllers. Then turn that effect into multiple similar (but not identical) streams, for a realistic shower spray.

This is a project-based learning experience. Each step of the process is rich with object lessons that are applicable to the variations that a motion design and compositing artist will face in the real world.

In this course, Chris Meyer helps beginning After Effects artists take their animations to the next level. Chris shows how to refine animations to create elegant, coordinated movements with the minimum number of keyframes—as well as slam-downs, whip pans, and other attention-getters. Additional movies show how to reverse-engineer existing animations, create variations on a theme, and master other parts of the program. Even though this course is designed for beginners, even veterans should learn tricks that many experienced users are unaware of. Chris' friendly running commentary lets you in on his mental process as he works on an animation. Exercise files for After Effects CS4 through CC are included with the course.

After Effects Apprentice is created by Trish and Chris Meyer and designed to be used on their own and as a companion to their book After Effects Apprentice.

In this installment of After Effects Apprentice, Chris Meyer focuses on ways to edit and enhance layers in After Effects CS4 through CC 2015. Through a series of Quizzler challenges and Idea Corner examples, Chris shares alternative ways to employ modes, sequencing, and adjustment layers, while special sidebar movies cover the subjects of creating seamless loops, animating effects points, understanding pixel aspect ratios, and employing Brainstorm to explore the variety of different looks that effects can create. The course also covers tricks for enhancing boring footage and tips for converting scans into moving sequences. Exercise files are included with the course.

The After Effects Apprentice series was created by Trish and Chris Meyer and are designed to be used on their own and as a companion to their book After Effects Apprentice.

Parenting is a way to group multiple layers within the same composition inside After Effects. In this course, Chris Meyer shows how to set up a parenting chain, discusses what makes a good parent, and demonstrates several techniques using parenting, such as creating a title animation with a minimal number of keyframes, building a geometric construct, and bringing an anthropomorphic robot arm to life. Sidebar topics include avoiding a scaling gotcha with parenting and creating abstract backgrounds using the Fractal Noise effect.

The After Effects Apprentice series was created by Trish and Chris Meyer. These tutorials are designed for After Effects CS4 through CC, and can be used on their own or as a companion to the Meyer's book, After Effects Apprentice.

Expressions are one of the most powerful but underused features in After Effects. They can be used to animate layer properties with code, as compared to explicitly keyframing every value in the Timeline, and have multiple parameters and layers that follow the lead of a master layer or controller effect, making it much easier to coordinate complex animations and quickly accommodate client changes. In this introduction, Chris Meyer shows how to let After Effects do most of the work by creating simple but very useful expressions that can be put to work on a wide variety of jobs.

The After Effects Apprentice series was created by Trish and Chris Meyer. These tutorials are designed for After Effects CS4 through CC, and can be used on their own or as a companion to the Meyer's book, After Effects Apprentice.

This installment of the After Effects Apprentice series introduces 3D space in Adobe After Effects. Authors Chris and Trish Meyer highlight key design considerations for working in 3D and provide step-by-step instructions for enhancing a scene with 3D lights and cameras. The course explores integration between Photoshop and After Effects, including modeling 3D objects with Repoussé extrusions and creating dimensional still images, and offers tips on using the different Axis Modes and maintaining maximum quality in 3D. There's also a chapter dedicated to the ray-traced 3D renderer, introduced in After Effects CS6, which allows you to build 3D layers into your composites, with realistic motion blur, depth of field, and reflections.

The After Effects Apprentice series was created by Trish and Chris Meyer. These tutorials are designed for After Effects CS4 through CC, and can be used on their own or as a companion to the Meyer's book, After Effects Apprentice.

Learning After Effects? Take your skills to the next dimension: 3D. After Effects CC comes bundled with the 3D application CINEMA 4D Lite and a pipeline to integrate its output directly into the After Effects timeline. In this course for C4D beginners, After Effects expert Chris Meyer shows you how to track and extract the camera move and ground plane from already shot footage, and add a 3D model—complete with lighting and shadows—to the scene. These project-based lessons are a great way to familiarize yourself with C4D motion tracking and layers.

The first course in the series, After Effects Apprentice 17, includes an overview of the C4D Lite user interface, as well as important setup information you need to know whenever you use live C4D layers in After Effects. We recommend you watch it first if you have no prior experience with C4D.

After Effects CC Essential Training covers all of the fundamentals required to get new video editors and mograph artists up to speed with this powerful program. The first two chapters explore the key concepts, terminology, and interface of After Effects, and break down the six foundations of After Effects mastery—compositions, layers, animation, effects, 3D, and rendering. Follow-up chapters introduce a variety of real-world projects designed to reinforce the skills you've learned, such as:

• Building graphics such as lower thirds, logos, and credit rolls
• Repairing and retiming video
• Keying green-screen footage
• Rotoscoping
• Animating a 3D logo
• Motion tracking

Your guide, Ian Robinson, wraps up the course with some project management techniques that will help you merge projects from multiple editors, and get you in the habit of archiving completed work.

Adobe After Effects CC 2018 offers new features that can enhance your VFX and motion graphics workflow. In this course, explore the major new additions to After Effects—including the latest version, 15.1, introduced in April 2018—and discover how to leverage them in your post-production process. Mark Christiansen provides a hands-on look at this update, showing how to edit keyboard shortcuts visually, create nulls from paths, automate motion with data-driven animation, use master properties to animate nested compositions, build smoother deformations with the Advanced Puppet tool, and more. In addition, he explains how to work with immersive video and customize your VR pipeline.

To keep you up-to-date on the latest additions to After Effects CC 2018, Mark will update the course when new features are released.

In this course, Alan Demafiles covers the core aspects of After Effects commonly used in editing and post production: masks, shapes, type, logos, stills, animating, rendering, and exporting. To begin, Alan compares After Effects to Premiere Pro so you can see the similarities and differences. Then he dives into hands-on demonstrations of how to limit effects with masks, create elements with shape layers, use text templates, animate a logo, and create a 3D type extrusion. Next he shows you how to work with imported pictures, create a Z-space camera montage, change the speed of animations, and more. He wraps up by walking through outputting steps and then kicks off a challenge exercise where you can put your skills into practice.

Learn how to create stunning visual effects with one of the most widely-used and highly-regarded compositing applications on the market—Adobe After Effects CC. In this course, Alan Demafiles dives into the fundamentals you need to start creating visual effects (VFX) with After Effects. Discover how to build accurate masks and keys, use rotoscoping to separate foreground from background, perform motion and camera tracking, and add your own 3D elements to a scene. Learn how to use effects such as particles and noise to create fire, replace the sky, and more. Then dive into the world of virtual reality as Alan explores the immersive VR and 360-degree video features introduced in After Effects CC 2018. In the final project-based chapter, you can reinforce your new skills by putting techniques into practice with a real-world challenge.

Visual effects have gone from a secret craft to a well-known career path, and with today's software, and the right tutorials, anyone can make high-quality VFX. The After Effects Compositing Essentials series is designed to help mograph artists of any level master techniques such as matching, tracking, keying, and rotoscoping. This course is your introduction to the series: part tutorial and part inspiration. Mark Christiansen introduces the seven essential compositing techniques and some bonus tips to help enhance drama, correct color, and create transparency. He also explains the art of storytelling with VFX, and how the pros use After Effects to create convincing movie magic.

So you've decided to rotoscope. Performing a "roto," an animated selection with masking and paint tools, is time consuming, but the result can be amazing. In this course, Mark Christiansen teaches you how to roto, and how not to roto, in After Effects. His technique relies on a mostly manual masking and painting process, but he also introduces some procedural tools, such as tracking, to make your job go faster. Learn how to build simple rotos and more advanced articulated rotos, replace missing or mismatched backgrounds, separate foreground action to visual effects, and make the results look more realistic with soft edges and motion blur. Mark also reveals techniques for painting with the Brush and Clone tools and tricks for working with the Roto Brush.

This course highlights some of the most exciting features in the latest release. These include enhanced 3D lights, cameras, and effects; the Warp Stabilizer; new stereoscopic tools; and the simplified audio workflow between Audition and After Effects. The course also includes bonus tips, "Tweaks for Geeks," on working more efficiently in After Effects, including searching, sorting, saving, and more.

After Effects CS5.5 New Creative Techniques was created and produced by Trish and Chris Meyer. We are honored to host their material in the lynda.com Online Training Library®.

After Effects has a powerful toolset, but there are some things Photoshop just excels at. Namely, manipulating raw images, color, and perspective. If you're a Creative Cloud subscriber, you have access to the entire suite of applications. So why not take advantage of both toolsets? In this course, Rich Harrington shows video professionals how to fully integrate Photoshop into a variety of After Effects workflows, including repairing images and building new assets for motion graphics and video effects.

Learn how to properly develop and then optimize raw files to increase performance in After Effects, and use Photoshop's advanced typographic controls. Find out how to use layer styles to add bevels, overlays, and glows, and correct lens distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. Rich also introduces a unique use for Vanishing Point, which allows you to export 3D objects for parallax movements and virtual sets. Plus, discover how to save out depth mattes for backdrops and keying, and use the powerful Content-Aware tools for background plates, set extensions, or recomposing assets. There's a lot to learn! Start watching to incorporate Photoshop's advanced tools into your next After Effects project.

Expressions are an incredibly powerful feature in After Effects. They are a way to affect the values of properties using lines of code rather than keyframes. This makes expressions faster and cleaner than traditional animation techniques. In this course, author Luisa Winters demonstrates how to use expressions in Adobe After Effects. Watch and learn how to add and edit expressions, change dimensions like rate and value, and use variables to assign and change values globally. Plus, find out how to use the After Effects Expression Language menu and introduce randomness into expressions for more creative possibilities.

Discover new ways to combine text and video in After Effects and create more visually stunning scenes. This course, the second volume of Eran Stern's Integrating Type into Video series, features four unique type treatments that integrate text directly with the action on screen. Watch and learn how to explode text, create liquid text, map text to moving objects, and animate type in Z space.

Along the way, Eran demos a handful of advanced techniques, from tracking, rotoscoping, and particles to distortion and camera effects. After watching this course, you'll be able to create impressive promos, trailers, and openers that will stand out from the rest.